The Innovate for Africa fellowship is one I won’t forget anytime soon. Personally, it is the ultimate test of my perseverance and ambition to make a difference in my immediate environment and the world at large. An example of an IFA training that embodies this is the design thinking course, made for the purpose of developing our entrepreneurial skills. The purpose of design thinking is to develop our creativity and problem solving skills so as to make us think critically. During the course of the training we were given a challenge to come up with an innovative solution to a problem. For this purpose we were divided into “Hackerthon” groups in order to “hack” our way through to an innovative solution.
The hackerthon challenge I was interested in was the problem of agricultural finance. I have had the opportunity of working as the Risk and Internal Control Officer for an agro-allied company and because of this I was exposed to field experience. I noticed that one big issue farmers faced was lack of access to funding. With the collaborative effort of the team I was assigned to, we geared up to tackle this problem. Thus began our experiential journey through the steps of design thinking. However, I’d be focusing on the “Empathize” stage of the design thinking process in this blog post.
Before we can really understand the problem of lack of funding for rural farmers, we have to put ourselves in the shoes of the farmers. One way to do so is through interviews. The process of interviewing the farmers embodies the empathize stage of design thinking. In this stage we are to put away all notions we might have had about the problem and focus on the interviewees. We have to understand their opinions by asking a lot of questions and immersing ourselves in their answers so we might walk vicariously in their shoes. We must ask open ended questions which cannot elicit a yes/no answer. By doing this, we might have new insights and revelations of the problem that we might never have had without undergoing this process.
Some of the questions asked during the interviews were
How long have you been a farmer?
What are some of the reoccurring challenges you’ve faced in all your years farming
Are you satisfied with the size of your farming operation?
If yes, what are some of the barriers to expansion?
Are you aware of some of the avenues available for expansion?
One thing I learnt after asking some of these questions is that lack of access to funding isn’t always a reason for lack of expansion. For example, one of the interviewee’s mentioned that the reason he hasn’t expanded his operations was because if he does so, the available market wouldn’t be able to buy all of the yearly produce he’d be harvesting. He hardly sells all his produce at his current capacity of production. Another interviewee wasn’t just ambitious enough to expand and was comfortable with her current operation because it was easy for her to manage. However, for the majority of farmers the problem balled down to lack of government and private funding and also a lack of information of where to access these funds when they are available. Even when they are aware of funding opportunities they hardly take advantage of them because of bias. They have been frustrated in the past by too much bureaucracy and corruption among the relevant financing bodies.
My understanding of my customer has changed because I have realized the following:
There is a huge information gap between farmers and relevant bodies who can provide them with solutions they need to grow.
Not every farmer is ambitious and wants to grow
A large number of farmers suffer from bias. They have been frustrated by the bureaucracy and corruption of finance institutions who sometimes ask for bribe as a means to facilitate loan payments
Overall, despite the many opinions from the interviewees, the consensus is that the major reason for lack of growth among farmers is a lack of access to finance and a huge information gap between farmers and the sources of finance when available.
This is a summary of the process being conducted in the Empathize stage of design thinking. We are better equipped with the information needed to better understand the solution. Now we are indeed aware and sure of what the actual problem of the farmer is. This way we will avoid coming up with a solution to an issue the farmer does not perceive as being a problem.
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