Agricultural Supply Chain Service WINnERS Secures over USD 1.7 Mn From AfDB and CJRF

WINnERS, an agricultural supply chain de-risking service aided by EIT Climate-KIC, has acquired over USD 1.7 Mn in funding from the Climate Justice Resilience Fund (CJRF) and the African Development Bank (AfDB).

The funding received from CJRF will be channeled towards improving the financial inclusion of female farmers as well as improving gender equality in Tanzania. As for the funds secured from AfDB, WINnERS will use it to scale services in three other African countries namely Ghana, Uganda and Zimbabwe. It will also be used to iterate on the de-risking service in Tanzania.

WINnERS is an initiative that was launched in Tanzania in 2015. It offers risk management services in order to build resilient supply chains from the smallholder to the global retailer.

The project was spearheaded by Imperial College London in partnership with The University of Reading, The University of Hamburg, climate scientists, Ecole Polytechnique and a number of other global institutions, insurance industry experts and food buyers.

These organisations are on a concerted effort to develop an ultra-modern weather and modelling technology to measure the risk exposure that buyers, banks, smallholder farmers and retailers will face in future. Their ultimate goal is to build products and services that protect both food buyers and producers from weather and climate driven risks.

WINnERS is attempting to build weather and climate resilient agricultural supply chains by modelling weather and climate risk exposure using technology, investing in small-scale farmers to ameliorate farming practices and credit worthiness.

With the support of the EIT Climate-KIC Scaler programme, WINnERS gained exposure through engagements with banks, official development assistance (ODA),a foreign aid designed to promote the economic development and welfare of developing countries

The project envisions to grow and operate in ten countries in sub-Saharan Africa by 2020. By providing financial access to millions of farmers, WINnERS will be better placed to improve conditionality around the loans and boost the adoption of climate-resilient practices through technological transfer and capacity-building activities.

Featured Image Courtesy: Al Jazeera