In November 2022, Rural Inclusion launched a strategic partnership with Opportunity International to pilot the use of the Ostrii platform in communities in Uganda and Malawi. Opportunity International are a global NGO serving over 18 million people in more than 20 countries.

The Ostrii platform is the first solution developed by Rural Inclusion, an offline mobile app available on Android and iOS, empowering community agents to effectively deliver education programmes to target groups. Leveraging a financial education curriculum of 3D/2D animation in local languages, the platform is targeted at upskilling smallholder farmers to manage their finances more effectively.

Opportunity International is a global NGO, serving over 18 million people in more than 20 countries. They design, deliver and scale innovative financial solutions that help families living in extreme poverty build sustainable livelihoods and access quality education for their children. They equip families with the tools and training they need to build their businesses, improve their harvests, provide for their families, send their children to school, and break the cycle of poverty.

Opportunity International launched its Agriculture Finance (AgFinance) program in 2008 to help end the cycle of low-productivity farming in rural African communities. Opportunity delivers targeted, finance-based solutions, like access to seeds and fertilizer, connections to buyers, and training on agricultural best practices. These programs are designed to help rural families transform their small farms into more productive, lucrative, and effective enterprises. To date, Opportunity International has helped more than 540,000 farmers in sub-Saharan Africa build resilient livelihoods for themselves through small-scale farming.

Opportunity International’s AgFinance programme leverages a network of local Farmer Support Agents, who are trusted farmers living and working in the communities served, who are equipped with smartphones to deliver trainings to other farmers. The collaboration between Rural Inclusion and Opportunity International targets to test the use of digital solutions in delivering cost-effective training to smallholder farmer groups in Uganda and Malawi.

The pilot is expected to last for four months, and will leverage 20 Farmer Support Agents in Mityana, Uganda and Mitundu, Malawi, to train approximately 2,500 famers, with 1,200 receiving education via the Ostrii platform. Training will be provided to the groups in the respective local languages of Luganda (Uganda) and Chichewa (Malawi) through six topics on the Ostrii platform:

• Saving
• Budgeting
• Bookkeeping
• Responsible Borrowing
• Investing
• Insurance

In March 2023, a documentary of the project will be released, along with a learning report.