Increased agriculture productivity remains critical to alleviating food insecurity and entrenched poverty, improving livelihoods for the 220 million farmers across Sub-Saharan Africa that survive on less than $2/day. However, small-scale farmers face large obstacles to productivity increases due to a lack of access to expensive mechanical equipment such as tractors. Not surprisingly, this results in smaller plots under cultivation and lower yields. The lack of access to mechanisation contributes to a cycle of entrenched poverty and food insecurity, as well as a gender productivity gap, that jeopardizes community, country, and continent stability.

Hello Tractor begins with a low-cost hardware monitoring device that can be installed on any tractor, connecting it to the Hello Tractor cloud for remote data tracking and analytics. Tractor owners purchase the monitoring device and a monthly subscription to Hello Tractor’s software and suite of applications. Farmers can then book a tractor via the app, and use its services for a lower price than buying their own tractors. Hello Tractor has also created a Booking Agent App that allows rural entrepreneurs to serve as a liaison between farmers in need of tractor services and tractor owners.

Over the next five years 10000 new tractors will bring 9 million hectares of land into production, creating 37 million metric tons of additional food, and adding over 2 million direct and indirect jobs.