Hello Erf

About

Hello Erf is an innovative agritech solution developed by Connect Trading PLC in Ethiopia.

How we work

• Farmers: Smallholder farmers in Ethiopia and other African countries have limited access to technologies that will increase their productivity, one of which is mechanization technology. Due to the fact that these farmers have small land sizes owning such big machinery isn’t economically viable. Agropreneurs in the rural area buy and rent tractors and combine harvesters to these farmers. However, due to lack of a structured market and coordinated service provision model, most farmers aren’t accessing the service. The challenge even worsens for women farmers.
• Tractor/Combiner Owners: The mechanization service providers who are currently operating have no proper way of organizing and handling bookings. Because of lack of clustered demand aggregation, high amount of fuel and time is lost due to travel between farm fields. Besides, the tractor owners, who mostly live in towns, don’t have any real-time information about their tractors or combiners making them vulnerable for fuel theft, under reports of revenue, and miss protective maintenance schedules.
• Call Center: The centrally located call center is dedicated to link smallholder farmers with mechanization service providers. Our operators are trained to understand the needs of the farmers and are ready to serve with high valued service and customer satisfaction attitude.

Impact on the Ground

• Simple and Equal Access: 95.2% of farmers who use mobile phone prefer to call instead of features like SMS or other. Our platform integrated different technologies to simplify how farmers and service providers get connected. Hence, it will accommodate most mobile user farmers who prefer to call instead of other complicated activities. It also avoids discrimination against women and other disadvantaged groups which currently are struggling to negotiate and hire service providers. Women led farming households will be equally benefited as their male counterparts.
• Profitable Service Providers: Mechanization service providers will increase their efficiency by aggregating orders and coordinating based location. Real time tracking and monitoring tools will help service providers have control over their business. Efforts will be made to increase farmers awareness to motivate them to use mechanization services. Service providers will harness this promotion by the equal market access opportunity from Hello Erf. This all collectively increase their profitability and their business expansion.
• Rural Job Creation: The ground work of Hello Erf will create many different job opportunities for youth in the rural area. They can serve their community by coordinating demand and supporting service providers locally. Trained operators and mechanics can setup mechanization service centers and oil shops. Hello Erf can support these youth by promoting them to service providers.