The second leg of the Qenta Business Development trip to Africa was Tanzania, specifically Dar Es Salaam.
Ollie (our President) and John (VP of Sales and Partnerships) attended the Afro World Agri Food International Conference which ran over three days.
‘It may seem like an unusual event for a FinTech company to attend,’ suggests John ‘but we are here as part of our Impact Mission. We can process payments to every mobile money account in Sub Saharan Africa (SSA)and with our model we want to work with commodities companies to help them get more funds to farmers and into African families and communities.’
The team had twenty five meetings in three days with buyers, distributors, agents and importers of agri products. Most of them had never actually considered what the farmer or exporter pays to receive payments. The team now are working on a number of partnership opportunities.
‘We were here for business development, but I attended the key note speaches on the first day,’ commented Ollie, ‘and I was really struck by the level of anger in the room regarding Africa farmers and exporters difficulites accessing international markets, funding supports from their own governments as well as international institutions – especially around sustainability and implementing climate initiatives’
Africa is suffering from Climate Change with a dramatic increase in both drought and floods.
Agriculture is one of the key industries across SSA. It is facing numerous challenges, hopefully Qenta can help buy getting more funds to farmers from their existing sales.
The next step in the Africa trip was to Nairobi.
