Africa Rice Village 

Africa Rice Village Model

 

A major driving force to help AfricaRice products and services (varieties, mechanized equipment, tools, good practices and policy options) to contribute to creating impacts on the livelihood of the rural poor and overcoming key challenges of the rice sector would be the effective and efficient transformation of subsistence rice farming to a business. AfricaRice proposes, therefore, the establishment of an ecosystem that would facilitate the effective and efficient transformation of subsistence rice farming to a business, which is the Africa Rice Village model.

 

In this ecosystem, research products and services are provided to rice farmers in an orchestrated manner that would lead to the development of sustainable business entities along the rice value chain. The Africa Rice Village model encompasses a transformative program initiated by AfricaRice and Manobi Africa, a private sector partner, which is geared towards accelerating and sustaining rice production in Africa using digitalization and ecosystem targeting, described by Manobi Africa as “phygitale agriculture”.

 

AfricaRice and its partners intend to catalyze the inclusive transformation of the rice value chain through a platform created by Manobi called the agCelerant value chain orchestration platform. This platform provides a holistic agricultural architecture, combining access to credit and financial services, insurance, quality inputs prices, and next-generation of agricultural advisory services.

 

The Africa Rice Village model is, therefore, an approach that organizes the rice value chain and connects producers, through contracts, to banks, insurance companies, input suppliers, and agro-industries, in order to control and mitigate risks, improve productivity, and ensure the sustainability livelihoods of African farmers.

 

The Africa Rice Village model is being piloted at M’bé rice farming community in Côte d’Ivoire. Preliminary results indicate the creation of structured business entities around women and youth in the M’bé community. Important and relevant data was generated to feed the interest of micro-finance institutions and commercial banks to provide credit support to rice growers based on updated knowledge of their borrower activities.

 

Moreover, the introduction and diffusion of AfricaRice’s improved aromatic rice variety (ORYLUX 6) in the rice farming communities of M’bé was facilitated.

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