A stock that can be verified
Weighed on calibrated scales, graded to a stated standard and stored in a facility the lender can inspect at any time. Cold rooms and dry stores keep the stock's value while the loan is outstanding.
Credit at the hub
The harvest is the collateral.
Every hub carries a banking counter. Produce that passes through it is weighed, graded, stored and sold under records a lender can rely on. Domestic banks and microfinance institutions can then lend against the harvest itself, collect at the point of sale, and build a credit history for producers who have never had one.
For development institutions and investors: Funding the platform.
The problem worth solving.
Rural producers cannot borrow because nothing about them is recorded: no volumes, no prices, no repayment history, no collateral a bank can hold. Lenders that tried lost their money for lack of records, collection and security. The result is a rural economy that cannot industrialize. The hub changes the facts on which a loan decision is made.
Follow the harvest.
Produce moves one way, money the other, and every step leaves a record. The bank enters at step 4 and is repaid at step 7, from the sale itself.
Scroll sideways to see the whole diagram.
- Produce
- Money
- Records, shared with consent
- 1
Deliver
Members deliver their harvest to the cooperative's collection point at the hub.
- 2
Store and receipt
The hub weighs, grades and stores each lot. A receipt records owner, quantity, grade, date and location.
- 3
Share the record
With the cooperative's consent, receipts and delivery records go to the partner bank.
- 4
Advance
The bank advances a share of the stored stock's value to the cooperative, against the receipt.
- 5
Add value and sell
Milling, drying, pressing or cold storage add value; the cooperative sells graded volume to a buyer as one block.
- 6
Buyer pays the bank
The buyer pays into the cooperative's account at the partner bank — not in cash at the gate.
- 7
Repaid at source
The bank deducts the advance and releases the receipt and the balance to the cooperative.
- 8
Members paid
The cooperative pays its members under its own rules. Every step adds to the credit record for the next season.
Produce as collateral.
What a lender needs before it will advance against a harvest — and what the hub supplies.
A receipt that can be pledged
Each lot is recorded against its owner — quantity, grade, date and location. The receipt is the document the bank lends against; it is released when the loan is repaid.
Control of the sale
The buyer pays into the cooperative's account at the partner bank, not in cash at the gate. Debt service is deducted at source before the balance reaches the cooperative.
A record that accumulates
Deliveries, grades, prices, energy use and repayments are recorded season after season. With the producer's consent, that history becomes a credit file — and the second loan is priced on the first.
The legal form of the pledge follows each country's law and each lender's own procedures. The hub supplies the facts; the bank decides.
Collective sale makes the whole chain bankable.
One smallholder is too small for a buyer to contract and too costly for a bank to lend to. A cooperative selling graded, stored volume through a hub is neither.
| Party | What collective sale through the hub gives them |
|---|---|
| Producers and their cooperative | A better price for a graded block than for loose sacks at the farm gate; the option to hold stock rather than sell at harvest-time lows; credit without a land title. |
| Buyers and processors | One contract instead of hundreds; consistent volumes, stated grades and traceable origin; cold and dry storage that hold quality; delivery on a schedule. |
| Banks and microfinance institutions | A contracted receivable instead of an unsecured advance; fewer, larger counterparties at a lower cost per loan; repayment deducted from the sale; a performance record per cooperative. |
| The hub | Throughput for its processing, storage and logistics services — and fees that do not depend on any loan's outcome. |
| Government | A rural economy that records itself: volumes, prices and credit that can be measured and planned for. |
The aggregation that earns the cooperative a better price gives the buyer a supply it can plan on and the bank a receivable it can lend against.
How credit is built at a hub.
- 1
The record
Every priced service is metered: kilograms milled, days in the cold room, cubic meters pumped, kilowatt-hours charged, units sold and paid for. With the producer's consent, that history becomes a credit file.
- 2
The cooperative
Cooperatives are the counterpart for collective bargaining on inputs and sale prices, and for aggregating volumes that reach a buyer worth negotiating with. Collective sale and easier access to market are the first gains before any loan is made.
- 3
The asset
Produce held and processed at the hub can be securitized: credit is advanced against a real, verifiable stock in a facility the lender can see, and repaid when it sells.
- 4
The collection
Repayment follows agricultural cash flows and is collected where revenue is earned — at the point of sale and at the hub counter — through mobile money and the cooperative account.
- 5
The lender
Domestic banks and microfinance institutions lend; the hub supplies the counter, the data and the collection. A lender sees which enterprises are performing in real time — a view no one else in the market holds.
From one harvest to a sector.
Credit is introduced in steps. Each step produces the evidence for the next; pooled across hubs, the records open the sector to lenders.
- 1
Accounts, payments and records
From the first season
Cooperative and member accounts at the hub counter; payment for hub services and for sales through the bank or mobile money. No credit risk yet; the record starts.
- 2
Inventory credit
Once stock is stored
Advances against graded produce held at the hub, repaid from the sale. The shortest and best-secured loan in agriculture.
- 3
Input and working-capital credit
Priced on the record
Seed, fertilizer and working capital for cooperatives whose deliveries and repayments are on file, repaid from the next harvest's sale.
- 4
Equipment on lease-to-own
For enterprises at the hub
Processing, irrigation, cold-chain and e-mobility equipment financed over its working life, with title retained until paid in full.
- 5
Sector data
Across the network
Aggregated, anonymized records across hubs and seasons — volumes, grades, prices, yields, repayment — give lenders, insurers and public programs the information to price agricultural risk for the sector as a whole, not one borrower at a time.
Clear roles, kept apart.
The hub is a paid service provider to the bank and the cooperative — never a party to the credit.
The bank lends
Decides, prices and holds every loan. Owns the credit risk and the client relationship, under its own procedures and banking secrecy.
The cooperative borrows
Contracts the credit, aggregates its members' produce, negotiates the sale and allocates the proceeds under its own governance.
The hub operates
Runs the infrastructure and supplies services to the bank and the cooperative — weighing, grading, storage, collection accounts, records. It takes no credit decision, collects nothing from members, and plays no part in cooperative governance or disputes. Its fees do not depend on any loan's performance.
A trained customer is a better client.
Training builds creditworthiness
A producer who has completed a recognized course through the hub's tele-education center — accredited, certified, recorded — presents a bank with a lower risk. Training is part of the credit system, not a separate program.
Incubators feed a pipeline
The hub incubates new businesses; their usage, sales and payment data make them legible to early-stage investors. Risk capital can be deployed to promising entrepreneurs on a reliable source of data — investable exposure that is otherwise hard to source in these markets.
Everyone wins
Producers gain price, market access and credit; banks gain records, collection and security; the hub gains throughput; governments gain a rural economy that formalizes itself.
The margin split: nothing paid in advance.
Where upfront cash is the barrier to using the equipment, the hub takes a share of the value added on the processed produce in place of a usage fee. The farmer or cooperative pays nothing in advance; the hub earns its return on the sale; the banking relationship and the offtake record make the arrangement commercially sound rather than a subsidy. The hub is paid as a percentage of the value it helped create — its interest and the producer's are the same.
Women's cooperatives first.
Women's cooperatives are the counterpart of first resort at every hub. The Banque d'Investissement et de Développement pour les Femmes (BIDF), Burundi's public investment and development bank for women, signed a collaboration agreement with Gigawatt Burundi S.A. on 23 September 2026: Gigawatt Burundi is BIDF's technical partner for bringing women-led enterprises in the energy value chains into its offer and for qualifying women in energy trades.
A banking partner at every hub.
The program invites domestic banks, microfinance institutions, guarantee funds and buyers to design the credit products for a pilot hub: inventory credit, input and working-capital credit, and lease-to-own equipment.