Mercy corps & Safaricom partner with Cropin to deliver personalized agri-intelligence
In a mission to improve productivity and resilience among smallholder farmers in Kenya, Mercy Corps AgriFin Accelerate Program and Safaricom collaborated with Cropin to introduce a digital platform that delivers hyperlocal advisories. The initiative focused on climate-smart agriculture, improving market access, and supporting financial inclusion for underserved farmers.
Client background
Mercy Corps is a global non-profit dedicated to alleviating poverty and promoting sustainable development, while Safaricom, Kenya’s largest mobile network operator, drives digital transformation across sectors, including agriculture. Together, through the AgriFin Accelerate Program, they aimed to create an integrated agri-tech solution to benefit smallholder farmers.
The challenge
The consortium aimed to overcome several barriers to farmer empowerment:
- Limited access to real-time, localized advisories
- Low digital penetration among smallholder farmers
- Difficulty in delivering context-specific agronomic recommendations
- Fragmented data sources affecting advisory precision
- Need to scale support across diverse geographies and crop types
The project required an intelligent solution capable of tailoring recommendations to local conditions.
The solution
Cropin deployed its SmartFarm and SmartRisk platforms to:
- Digitize over 15,000 acres of farmland and onboard thousands of farmers
- Provide personalized crop advisories based on location, weather, and phenology
- Leverage satellite imagery and AI to monitor crop performance and identify anomalies
- Enable field agents to deliver insights via mobile in local languages
- Integrate data sources for continuous improvement in recommendation accuracy
The system ensured inclusivity and ease of adoption, even in low-connectivity zones.
Impact
- Benefited over 20,000 farmers with actionable, timely advisories
- Improved farm productivity and resilience to climate variability
- Strengthened digital financial services access through Safaricom’s platform
- Enabled data-backed decisions for both farmers and stakeholders
- Built a replicable model for agri-digital transformation in Africa
The initiative showcases the power of cross-sector collaboration in driving inclusive, tech-enabled agricultural growth.