Challenge

Since their establishment in 1953, Kibirigwi has always maintained the ambitious vision of being the leading cooperative society in Kenya for quality and quantity of coffee and other farm produce. The cooperative society has taken many steps to meet this vision, in particular by providing quality services for members; from establishing 8 factories with coffee washing stations, to providing farmer training.

However, as operations have grown, maintaining the same quality of service becomes more difficult. Kibirigwi currently has over a thousand members who supply eight different factories which are actively managed by the society. Each factory operates on different schedules and have varying service capabilities. This means that it is extremely important that each farmer knows what is available to them as an individual, as this varies depending on which factory they supply to.

Farmers need to know when each factory is accepting more coffee, when training is being delivered, and which payment options are available. But delivering this information by word of mouth is near impossible, leading to a declining quality of service.

Solution

Kibirigwi FCS adopted the Climate Edge platform, making use of our competitively priced bulk SMS feature. Through the simple user interface, and affordable pricing, Kibirigwi knew that they could viably use SMS as a channel to deliver time sensitive information remotely to farmers in real-time.

Kibirigwi did not have the contact details of their members available, so benefited from the use of Climate Edge’s farmer registration process. Kibirigwi advertised their unique Climate Edge code to farmers during the harvest period, when farmers would frequently visit the factories. Farmers messaged this code to 40244, instantly subscribing them to the Kibirigwi service. This allowed the cooperative to build their database of farmer contact details effortlessly from scratch.

The cooperative staff have since sent weekly bulk SMS messages to their farmers, informing them of key information, including factory opening times, information on loan availability and agronomic services.

Results

Kibirigwi have sent over 35,000 SMS messages to the 648 farmers subscribed to the Climate Edge platform. On average Kibirigwi send one message a week to their members, specifically utilising the platform to disseminate key information that needs to be delivered in real time.

Examples of how Kibirigwi used the platform to provide a market-leading level of service to their members include:

• Informing members of the dates to register for soil testing, to ensure that uptake is as high as possible

• Advertising the availability of advanced funds for parents who need to pay for school fees, to ensure that children are not forced to miss schooling between coffee harvests when cash is low.