Cooperative Bank of Oromia (Coopbank) on Monday launched its Digital Agri Input Financing Product, a major step toward transforming Ethiopia’s agricultural sector with inclusive, tech-enabled financial solutions.
As part of its pilot phase, the bank disbursed its first loan to a female farmer in the malt barley value chain in Arsi and West Arsi. The pilot aims to reach over 5,000 farmers, marking the beginning of a three-year plan to empower more than 3 million farmers nationwide, in line with Coopbank’s mission to empower communities and transform lives.
Partnering with Rabo Bank
In collaboration with Rabo Bank, this innovative Digital Agri Input Financing Solution aims to remove long-standing obstacles in the agricultural industry by providing easy access to capital, advisory services, premium inputs, markets, and insurance.
With the help of cutting-edge technologies, this solution makes use of alternative credit scoring derived from Farm Pass farmer profiles and transaction data, integrates it with data from remote sensing, and makes use of sophisticated loan monitoring tools to enable inclusivity and scalability.
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The bank stated, “As part of this transformative initiative, our bank has deployed the Farm Pass platform powered by Mastercard to digitise agricultural value chains, allowing farmers to establish digital footprints.”
Farm Pass services
Farm Pass offers services like harvest forecasting, input and loan requests, farmer profiling, produce aggregation, and access to an online marketplace.
“To date, we have onboarded over 515,000 farmers and facilitated the digitisation of transactions worth more than 460 million ETB across vital value chains, including coffee, barley, wheat, dairy, and more,” the bank added.
Digital Agri Input Financing from Coopbank is a movement towards inclusive, sustainable, and digital agriculture rather than just a product.
Coopbank’s 20 years of impact in Ethiopia
Techpression reported in March that the Cooperative Bank of Oromia marked its 20th anniversary with a solid history of financial expansion and economic influence.
The bank has grown in size and impact since its founding on March 8, 2005, and it now plays a significant part in Ethiopia’s financial industry.
Coopbank takes pride in being a digital-first bank that more than 14.6 million Ethiopians trust.
With its state-of-the-art mobile banking platform, which empowers millions of people, it has processed over ETB 3 trillion and launched the first fully digital financing product for MSMEs.
It is dedicated to providing speed, agility, and innovation to empower consumers’ financial journeys, as seen by the fact that 80 percent of its transactions are digital.
Over 1.2 million account holders have benefited from the bank’s more than ETB 18.4 billion ($140 million) in collateral-free digital loans made available through Michu digital loans. Small businesses have been able to grow, add jobs, and enhance service accessibility because of these loans.
In order to grow their companies from home-based operations to fully functional commercial endeavours, several entrepreneurs have obtained loans totalling more than ETB 2 million.
Through the provision of financial solutions to those who were previously underserved by traditional banking, this program has strengthened Ethiopia’s micro and small business sector.
The bank’s mobile wallet service, Coopay e-Birr, is the third-largest supplier of mobile financial services in Ethiopia, having handled transactions of ETB 2.6 trillion.
In terms of digital transactions, it has overtaken private banks, demonstrating the bank’s effectiveness in promoting financial inclusion via technology.