Over 2,000 oil palm farmers in Cross River and Akwa Ibom states now have access to digitized financial services, thanks to a partnership between Releaf (www.Releaf.africa), a raw material procurement & logistics platform that is making it easy for crops to move from farm to factory, and OnePipe (https://OnePipe.com), a digital gateway enabling financial services.
Over 65 percent of Nigerians are outside the financial services envelope, with millions unbanked or under-banked. The combination of COVID-19 disruptions and the widening digital divide in the rural and underserved areas has threatened the attainment of financial inclusion targets in Nigeria. This partnership between Releaf and OnePipe is thus a welcome initiative to the National Financial Inclusion Strategy and provides opportunities for thousands of rural farmers across Nigeria’s South-South region.
Speaking on the collaboration, co-founder and Chief Technology Officer for Releaf, Uzoma Ayogu, said; “Since inception, Releaf has empowered over 1,000 farmers to supply over 10 million kilograms of quality crops to various food factories. While disbursements to our farmers have been largely cash-based, we now have access to digitized fund disbursement via embedded, customised accounts, provisioned by OnePipe, to drive financial inclusion of…
