AFIDE: Providing Equal Opportunities for Small Scale Entrepreneurs

Economic inclusion and empowerment of the people at the grass-root level irrespective of their diversities is very crucial to societal development, hence, it is a key target of advancement and one of the Sustainable Development goals of the United Nations.

As a way of creating an equal agricultural opportunity for all and sundry that will enhance the means of living in our society, FarmKonnect Nigeria – a social enterprise, an Agribusiness Company and the first Agricultural Real Estate Company in Niger who has keyed itself into the sustainable development goals to promote food security and sustainable agricultural practices in Africa has created a project named ‘’AFIDE’’ which means Agricultural and Financial Inclusion of Daily Earners. AFIDE aims at improving the lives and conditions of daily earners, that is, those who do not earn salaries in a large sum, but earn daily profits or commission from sales of commodities and/or service rendering.

AFIDE have created an enabling environment that permits the rare opportunity to benefit from the dividend of Agriculture as it was initiated to bridge the gap of inequality in the aspect of economic inclusion of daily earners and other small scale entrepreneurs.

Additionally, the AFIDE scheme encourages the saving culture among Daily Earners which has been perceived as their financial security overtime; the thrift collection system is unarguably the safest mode of safeguarding their finances, therefore, the AFIDE project operates a cooperative model that suits their financial ideology with the application of modern technologies and methodologies that enables easy access and monitoring of their daily contributions which ultimately enhances their financial growth.

AFIDE is ensuring that a fraction of the income generated by these daily earners and small scale entrepreneurs is included in the agricultural sector of the nation; thereby contributing to the growth of the economy and also food security.

In a nutshell, AFIDE exists to help Daily Earners and other Small Scale Entrepreneurs entrust their daily funds into agriculture and enable them to make profits while their contributions become security for them to secure loans from banks in partnership with AFIDE. The banks directly disburse the loan to the subscribers while AFIDE under the supervision of FarmKonnect Nigeria gives them a cooperative guarantee.

AFIDE is currently spreading its wings across the South-West of Nigeria and the numbers of Daily Earners and other Small Scale Entrepreneurs subscribing to this project are increasing day by day; as stated by the United Nations, this is the decade of action towards achieving the SDGs, and AFIDE is contributing towards the achievement of SDG10 in Nigeria through this initiative.