To provide 125,000 smallholder farmers with access to Financial inclusion, agricultural technology company ThriveAgric has launched a new project. The initiative, called AYuTe (Agriculture, Youth and Technology), will be implemented in collaboration with Heifer International, a multinational NGO.

In eight northern states—Adamawa, Gombe, Yobe, Jigawa, Kaduna, Kano, Katsina, and Bauchi—ThriveAgric and its technical partners will help farmers open bank accounts over the course of the next year so they can access debit cards and other Financial Services.

With this project, Heifer International hopes to fulfil its goal of being the winner of the annual Agriculture, Youth and Technology (AYuTe) Africa Challenge in 2022. Over 200 young people will be employed by ThriveAgric to carry out this project, and 1,000 point-of-sale (POS) machines will be given to chosen Nigerian youth in order to increase and supplement their family’s income.

Only 51% of Nigerian citizens use formal financial services, and women are consistently more excluded than males, according to the EFInA Access to Financial Services Survey 2020. According to the report, adults in northern Nigeria are considerably more financially excluded than adults in the south, and there are still huge disparities in financial access for some of the most economically marginalized communities in Nigeria.

Adults in rural locations are considerably less likely to be included in this group than adults in cities, which means that their access to funding and funding options is severely restricted. In order to guarantee that at least 40% of the intended beneficiaries in the eight northern states of Nigeria—including smallholder farmers, point-of-sale operators, and project staff—are women, ThriveAgric will be tackling this project via a gender perspective.