By Kimuri Mwangi
Avenews, an agri-trade fintech financier, has announced a strategic partnership with agri-input distributors to embed financing directly into Kenya’s agri-input supply chain. The initiative enables agrodealers and stockists to access the inputs they need instantly, as Avenews pays the distributor upfront on their behalf while stockists repay later.
Nancy Kinyanjui, Managing Director of Avenews Kenya, said the partnership addresses a critical liquidity gap for agrodealers, particularly during peak seasons. “One of the things that they are telling us is they are getting problems with restocking, especially during high seasons,” she said. “Whenever they need to restock, they do not have to wait, and there are no delays. The distributor is paid immediately by Avenews, and the stockist gets their stock in good time.”
Speaking in Mwea during the launch of the product, Kinyanjui said they had started by partnering with Mazao na Afya Ltd, one of Kenya’s leading agri-input suppliers. Founded in 1997, the company operates across seven regions through a network of over 5,000 agrodealers and stockists. Avenews said the partnership leverages Mazao na Afya’s extensive distribution network.
Peter Karanja, Chief Executive Officer of Mazao Group of Companies, explained how the financing product allows distributors to focus on their core business. “Those who will benefit from this product are the stockists or the retailers to whom we sell our products, and then they sell to the farmers. We supply farming chemicals, fertilizer and seeds, and more than 80% of our business depends on those stockists. So, when they benefit from the financing product, the farmers will also benefit. We will supply the stockists, Avenews will pay us, and the stockists will pay the debt within three months. We have had issues in the past with them because, as you know, agriculture is seasonal. Sometimes during the rainy season, a stockist may need fertilizer and seeds to sell to the farmers, but they don’t have the capital. On the other hand, we can’t help them since we are traders and not financiers. We are grateful that Avenews have taken that responsibility, and we can concentrate on making sure we have the products they need as they supply the farmers.”
Kinyanjui explained that the model makes use of Mazao’s established trade relationships and data to ensure trust. “They have traded with them for a long time, and they already have a vast amount of data relating to trade transactions,” she said. “We want to use trust as the new collateral.”
By paying the distributor upfront, Avenews unlocks working capital for distributors while ensuring stockists can access inputs immediately. “This sort of ecosystem lending is not just a win for Avenews, it’s a win for everyone on the value chain,” Kinyanjui said. “The distributor no longer has to give their stock to their stockist on credit, locking their working capital. The stockist or the agro-dealer can restock immediately when they need to, and that means that the farmer can walk into the stockist or the agro-dealer’s shop and they can get the inputs that they need when they need them.”
The Stockist Financing product, launched under the partnership, is fully digital and aligns repayments to the stockists’ sales cycles.
Betty Mulemia, Field Marketing & Partnerships Manager at Avenews, said the solution is tailor-made to address liquidity challenges and seasonality. “We understand the challenges that most agrodealers face. We also know what farmers go through. And our solution is tailor-made to support farmers in ensuring that all the relevant stakeholders have inputs in and out of season,” she said.
Kinyanjui added that Avenews plans to scale up the model to include other actors in the agriculture value chain “So this ecosystem is not just for agrochemicals. We want to make sure that we can scale this across all the other lines in the agri-sector. We want to make sure that as long as you have an existing ecosystem, you’re the distributor, you’re the anchor, even if it’s a manufacturer, and you have your ecosystem of stockists or agrodealers, we can be able to support you in that. So we are looking at it as a model to scale across the market and across all value chains in the agriculture sector.
She said this model is replicable across the country, but they also have to be careful about the distributor that they are onboarding as a partner to ensure that only quality and genuine products are supplied across the market. “We don’t just fund stock, we enable movement. Our goal is simple: when an agrodealer is ready to trade, capital should never be the reason they can’t.”
