About Us
Local Links Ventures’ vision is Resilient Livelihoods in Flourishing Landscapes. Our business model is built around making farming sustainable by linking farmer households to actors within the ecosystem that contribute to improved access to financial services, credible carbon credit programs, and increase information and access to input and output markets.
Our platform, building on farmer collectives such as savings and loan associations, promotes the engagement of women and youth in agricultural value chains. We have modeled and continue to invest in a House-of-Agents model that engages the youth in the last-mile distribution of responsible products and services that improve the lives and livelihoods of farmers.
Who do we serve?
Úsing a basic feature phone, farmer households and their collectives can dial a USSD code or via an App on their smart phones to request for a product or inquire about use of a product (product knowledge).
How We Do It
The Local Link Ventures® Platform is accessible in web, app & USSD portals to cater for a variety of industry players and connections.
Clients served
Growth rate
Youth Agents
Recruited from local communities youth agents are trained and mentored on how to provide a bundle of services to savings groups that already know and trust them. Using the Lastmile android app on a smartphone, they:
- Introduce the digital application to the farmer groups.
- Train and digitize the saving groups by profiling the individual members.
- Train the group’s key contact person or lead farmer to digitally assign roles to the elected Chairperson, Treasurer and Secretary.
- Assist group members learn how to use the USSD version to manage their gardens and finances.
- Track and ensure timely delivery of ordered inputs by group members from suppliers.
- Aggregate farmer group produce and post collective price in readiness for off-taking.
- Serve as a trainer to the saving group in areas of finance, proper crop care & animal husbandry, health & nutrition etc.
Buyer & Supplier organizations
By using the lastmile Web portal, companies and organizations can be able to tap into previously fragmented rural markets to either push, pull or promote products and services. Advantages include:
- Buyer organization have the advantage of produce traceability down to the respective farmer group and members where a particular crop originated.
- By taming the “middleman”, companies can buy directly from producer organizations contributing to better prices in the sector.
- Financial services are extended to previously under-served markets.
Savings Groups
All types of savings groups (not only those comprised of farmers) will benefit from the Lastmile platform. Benefits include:
- Transparency between group members and official as all names and transactions are immediately accessible to be viewed by all members.
- Automatic generation of printable revenue and loan records for each member that can be presented to financial institutions for consideration
- Aggregation of group production activities and direct linkage to the market