Building the rails: a decade of the One Million Farmers Platform

The World Bank's One Million Farmers Platform started in 2019 with a simple but demanding question: what would it take to move digital agriculture from isolated pilots to a connected national ecosystem for smallholder farmers?

Kuza co-hosted some of the earliest convenings around that question, bringing ministries, county leadership, private sector partners and agritech companies into the same room alongside the World Bank.

A recent World Bank engagement with the OMFP ecosystem and KALRO was a reminder of how far the vision has travelled, and how much open collaboration still matters. Digital agriculture cannot be built in silos; it needs ecosystems, interoperability and trusted actors working together across government, agritech, research and local communities.

Kuza has worked alongside the World Bank, the Ministry of Agriculture and 26 county governments through the NARIGP and KCSAP programmes to translate that ambition into youth agripreneurs, open digital networks, digital advisory and last-mile community infrastructure.

The lesson from the journey is that technology alone is never enough. What matters is trust: between farmers and agripreneurs, between ecosystems and institutions, and in the idea that digital systems can create real economic opportunity at the last mile.

The next chapter will be built through open networks, shared rails and partnerships that make farmers more visible and better served. Kuza is proud to keep building the rails rather than the train.