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Good practice

WeFarm: SMS Peer-to-Peer Knowledge Network for Farmers

Kenya · Nairobi · See the Kenya profile

WeFarm let farmers without internet ask and answer farming questions by free SMS/USSD, matching questions via NLP; it grew to over 1.8 million farmers in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania before shutting down in 2022 after failing to build a sustainable revenue model.

1000000
Registered users (Oct 2018)
1800000
Farmers reached (Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania)
10000000 USD
Venture capital raised
WeFarm: SMS Peer-to-Peer Knowledge Network for Farmers

Details

Maturity
Discontinued
Promoter
WeFarm Ltd
Period
2015-2022
Keywords
agriculture, peer learning, SMS/USSD, ICT4D

Context

WeFarm, spun out of the UK charity Cafedirect Producers Foundation in 2015, built a free SMS/USSD peer-to-peer network letting smallholder farmers in East Africa and Peru ask and answer farming questions without internet access, using NLP to match questions to likely responders.

Results

The network passed 1 million registered users by October 2018 and reportedly reached over 1.8 million farmers across Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania, raising more than $10 million in venture capital.

Conclusions

Despite strong reach, WeFarm could not monetise its peer-support network at scale, closing its e-commerce arm in mid-2022 and ceasing operations shortly after — a cautionary case that high usage does not guarantee financial sustainability.

Implementation

Implementation detail (cost, timeline, staffing, conditions for success) is not yet available for this practice.

Data sources

Where this practice's information was retrieved from, and when.

Attachments

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