By Business Insider Reporter
Airtel Money’s latest partnership with the Tanzania Cooperative Development Commission (TCDC) marks a significant step in the digital transformation of Tanzania’s agriculture sector – a lifeline for millions of smallholder farmers across the country.
The collaboration aims to expand access to digital financial services for farmers, enabling mobile payments, affordable smartphones, input financing, and customized financial literacy support.
This is particularly impactful in underserved and rural regions where traditional banking services are either limited or nonexistent.
The initiative follows a successful pilot project in Morogoro, where Airtel Money worked with Agricultural Marketing Cooperative Societies (AMCOS) to facilitate digital disbursement of agricultural inputs. The outcome, according to Airtel, was greater efficiency, improved transparency, and better access to financial tools for small-scale farmers.
For Tanzania, this development is more than just a technological upgrade – it’s a critical lever for inclusive rural development.
By bringing farmers into the formal financial ecosystem, the partnership supports productivity, promotes accountability, and paves the way for sustainable economic growth in the agriculture sector, which employs about 65% of the Tanzanian workforce.
“This partnership is about empowerment. We’re giving farmers the tools to make faster transactions, access better resources, and ultimately improve their livelihoods,” said Airtel Tanzania Managing Director Charles Kamoto.
Dr. Benson Ndiege, CEO of the TCDC, echoed this sentiment, adding that digital financial inclusion is essential for modernizing cooperative farming and reducing rural poverty.
The partnership builds on Airtel Tanzania’s broader fintech ambitions.
In 2024, the company teamed up with Remitly to facilitate direct international money transfers to Airtel Money wallets, benefiting over 19 million users.
Earlier, in 2023, it also enabled cross-border payments in the UAE through TerraPay, a move that allowed Tanzanian customers to pay at merchant locations abroad via their mobile wallets.
This latest initiative places Tanzania among the African countries leveraging fintech to drive agricultural transformation.
Similar models in Malawi, such as Mbora – a social enterprise offering digital financial tools to farmers – have shown that mobile technology can bridge the rural-urban divide and unlock value chains from seed to market. As Tanzania pushes towards a digitally inclusive economy, partnerships like this between Airtel Money and TCDC will be crucial in ensuring that no farmer is left behind.
