DeFi in the real world: Tórónet Blockchain partners with USAID -Feed the Future Program — to empower millions of farmers

PRESS RELEASE

March 2, 2023

Announcing AgriFi, a first-of-its-kind platform connecting smallholder farmers across Nigeria to financiers worldwide through decentralized finance!

The Feed the Future[1] Agricultural Extension & Advisory Services Activity (The Extension Activity), funded by United States Agency for International Development (USAID) Nigeria and Partnership Initiatives in the Niger Delta (PIND), announces the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the VorianCorelli Corporation/Tórónet Corporation

This MOU is intended to facilitate the collaboration between the Extension Activity and VorianCorelli to achieve sustainable access to markets and capital for smallholder farmers (SHF) and agribusiness micro, small, and medium entrepreneurs (MSMEs) by:

(i) Identifying and facilitating the delivery of affordable financial services, including savings, credit, investment, and other non-traditional financial services such as the TóróNet blockchain protocol to clusters of SHFs and agribusiness MSMEs to enable the adoption of productivity-enhancing most impactful practices (MIPs).

(ii) Facilitating the use of ICT and other supportive services in agriculture to enable access to factor and output markets, and for disseminating agricultural extension messaging based on MIPs, and generating actionable data for safe agribusiness investment decisions in value chains especially targeting youths, women, and financially excluded SHFs and MSMEs.

(iii) Introducing strategic value chain partners and facilitating technical assistance, training, and other capacity building to SHF groups and MSMEs, including independent agents, agro-dealers, mechanization services providers, extension service organizations, agricultural cooperatives and associations, storage and aggregation companies, processors, traders, business development service providers (BDSPs), women- and youth-owned business, etc.

Expected results of AgriFi:

· At least 300,000 smallholder farmers and 300 agribusiness MSMEs, including 40 percent women and 40 percent youth, enrolled on the “listing module” of the Tórónet blockchain impact protocol and accessing credit financing.

· About $20 million is leveraged as credit finance by enrolled smallholder farmers and agribusiness MSMEs

· At least 10 new jobs are created by partner agribusiness MSMEs through the collaboration.

· At least one training in access to non-traditional finance conducted for partner MSMEs in each of the seven Extension Activity states.

The Feed the Future Nigeria Agricultural Extension and Advisory Services Activity leverages the power of Nigerian entrepreneurship to spur the growth of self-sustaining, demand-driven extension and advisory services that are relevant and adoptable by smallholder farmers. The Extension Activity works through micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs) partners, to facilitate learning, replication, and scale around alternative models of extension that increase access to and adoption of agricultural technologies that farmers need to increase market participation and build their resilience. Together, Extension Activity partners are piloting proven technologies, scaling successful ones, and promoting the adoption of improved production practices and service delivery. These efforts are aimed at rapidly, effectively, and sustainably expanding access to agro-inputs and services, as well as disseminating extension messaging to at least 2 million smallholder farmers in Nigeria. The Extension Activity is funded by USAID and PIND and implemented by Winrock International.

Click here to learn more about AgriFi and get involved.

VorianCorelli operates a digital platform that increases smallholder farmer and rural community aggregate income by solving the access to markets problem through its matching platform which aggregates (i) demand from upstream actors through its “listing module”, (ii) supply through its “Aggregation as a Service Module”, and (iii) finance through its “working capital as a service module”. VorianCorelli acts as the central counterparty to all actors in the value chain and is a partner to Tórónet Corporation.

Tórónet Corporation has developed the layer-1 blockchain protocol on which the project operates. Tórónet is the first blockchain protocol native to the African continent and seeks to make financial tools accessible to the many so that they can achieve their aspirations. Tórónet facilitates the fulfillment of human aspirations by increasing the access of persons at the bottom of the pyramid to capital using the power of DeFi. It does this through the provision of financial services to communities previously beyond the reach of traditional financial infrastructure and most blockchains.

[1] Feed the Future is the U.S. Government’ Global Hunger & Food Security Initiative