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Hello Tractor’s Investor Announces $3.5M for Africa Tractor Financing

May 30, 2022

Heifer International, an international development organization, has announced an additional $3.5 million USD in funding for its tractor financing project in Africa, which aims to accelerate agricultural growth on the continent.

The investment comes two weeks after Heifer International invested $1 million USD in Hello Tractor’s unique Pay-As-You-Go (PAYG) Tractor financing for agri-entrepreneurs in Nigeria, bringing the organization’s investment in catalytic funding for tractor financing in Africa to $4.5 million USD.

Pierre Ferrari, President and CEO of Heifer International

During President and CEO Pierre Ferrari’s travel to Nigeria to engage with agriculture stakeholders, an announcement was made.

Heifer International’s tractor financing investments help smallholder farmers enhance their mechanization, enabling increased food security and entrepreneurship across Africa. The funds will be used to support Heifer International’s Tractors 4 Africa project.

“Increased mechanization, particularly tractors, is critical as smallholder farmers scale up production and develop successful and sustainable farming companies,” said Pierre Ferrari, President and CEO of Heifer International.

“We are particularly intrigued by Hello Tractor’s Pay-As-You-Go tractor financing approach, which originated through Heifer International’s AYuTe Africa Challenge, an agritech competition for young entrepreneurs.”

Heifer International established the AYuTe Africa Challenge in 2021, which provides cash grants to the most promising young agritech innovators in Africa on an annual basis. It also contributes to Heifer International’s goal of assisting over six million African farmers in earning a sustainable living income by 2030. The $1 million USD AYuTe Africa Challenge award enabled Hello Tractor to finance 17 tractors for 17 entrepreneurs in three countries: Nigeria, Kenya, and Uganda.

He was delighted by the excitement demonstrated by smallholder farmers, booking agents, tractor operators, and tractor owners to revolutionize the agricultural landscape in Nigeria and other African countries during a stakeholder event conducted in his honor on Wednesday in Abuja.
Heifer International’s new $3.5 million USD investment in its Tractors 4 Africa (T4A) programme will fund an extra 75 tractors in Nigeria, Kenya, and Uganda.

Over the next ten years, the overall Heifer International investment of $4.5 million USD will provide affordable access to tractor services to 872,250 smallholder farmers, enhancing farm production, employment, food security, and farmer livelihoods. Over the next ten years, the investment will generate 6,979 new jobs as booking agents, tractor operators, technicians, and tractor owners.

“Africa has the fewest tractors per farmer in the world, and as a result, yields per hectare are low,” Ferrari explained. “We want to change the fact that smallholder farmers do not have access to tractors. We welcome our partners and the donor community to join us on this adventure.”

The Tractors 4 Africa project of Heifer International seeks to deploy 50,000 tractors to service more than 90 million smallholder farmers across Africa, increasing their earnings and creating more than 500,000 employment.

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Charles Rapulu Udoh

Charles Rapulu Udoh is a Lagos-based lawyer, who has several years of experience working in Africa’s burgeoning tech startup industry. He has closed multi-million dollar deals bordering on venture capital, private equity, intellectual property (trademark, patent or design, etc.), mergers and acquisitions, in countries such as in the Delaware, New York, UK, Singapore, British Virgin Islands, South Africa, Nigeria etc. He’s also a corporate governance and cross-border data privacy and tax expert.
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Nigerian Tractor-booking Platform Raises US$1 Million New Funding

May 2, 2022

Hello Tractor, a Nigerian tractor-booking platform, has raised US$1 million in funding from Heifer International. The money will be used to finance loans for tractor purchases, which will be returned from the earnings generated by leasing the tractors out to local farmers.

Hello Tractor has launched a tracking device and software that enables farmers and tractor owners to book linked tractors directly from their phones using a tracking device and software. Farmers benefit from an essential service that was previously inaccessible to them, while fleet owners benefit from an opportunity to optimize their fleet while also reducing fuel theft and fraud. It currently serves over 500,000 small farmers across Africa, with more than 3,000 tractor and combine owners on the continent..

Heifer International, which assists farmers and local food producers to boost local economies and create sustainable livelihoods that offer a livable wage, has now committed US$1 million in funding to the project. In Nigeria, the money is being used to fund a new program called the “Pay-As-You-Go (PAYG) Tractor Financing for Increased Agricultural Productivity in Nigeria,” which has already enabled tractor purchases in the states of Nasarrawa, Abuja, and Enugu.

“In order to make tractor ownership — and the consistent revenue that these machines can generate — a reality for entrepreneurs who find it difficult to obtain loans through traditional channels, we devised the PAYG program. We look at the amount of revenue tractor owners can earn rather than the amount of collateral they can put up “Hello Tractor was founded by Jehiel Oliver, who is also the company’s CEO.

It is because of Heifer that Oliver and his team are able “to extend creative financing to people who were previously labeled ‘unbankable,’ while also extending access to technology that has the potential to increase the earnings of millions of smallholder farmers throughout Africa.”

Heifer International’s Adesuwa Ifedi, senior vice president of Africa programs, explained that the PAYG model provided funding for entrepreneurs who wanted to generate jobs by capitalizing on the need for tractor services on African farms, but who did not have traditional forms of collateral.

The youth with excellent business skills who can help revolutionize African agriculture but are generally disregarded by private equity investors, according to Ifedi, would be able to access cash as a result of the initiative.

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Charles Rapulu Udoh