Mission
EcoFarmer is Econet’s own mobile farming platform. EcoFarmer was launched in 2013 as a weather indexed insurance business. Following launch, EcoFarmer enabled farmers to insure their crops against the risk of false rainfall, excessive rainfall and excessive dry days for as little as $2.50 per year for $25 worth of cover. The cover was available for maize. Insured farmers also received free maize advisory tips and market information. This service was popular with smallholder farmers, although improvement areas were identified.
A research on customer needs in conjunction with our partners in 2015, using human centred design, allowed the business to identify other needs that the service was not addressing. As a result, the services offered are being expanded to include information, financial and value chain services that will be offered by EcoFarmer in conjunction with various Econet units or other external strategic partners. These services will be provided to small scale-farmers, large-scale farmers, farmer organisations as well as industry at large.
Voluntary Commitments
The Sendai Framework Voluntary Commitments (SFVC) online platform allows stakeholders to inform the public about their work on DRR. The SFVC online platform is a useful toolto know who is doing what and where for the implementation of the Sendai Framework, which could foster potential collaboration among stakeholders. All stakeholders (private sector, civil society organizations, academia, media, local governments, etc.) working on DRR can submit their commitments and report on their progress and deliverables.