Zimbabwe Stock Exchange listed tech company, Cassava Smartech, an off shoot of Econet Wireless Zimbabwe, has launched a tractor sharing service app modeled along ride hailing service Uber.

It takes a farmer 40 days to prepare his land for planting, a smart tractor can do it in eight hours – this can increase small-scale farmers’ yields by 200%.

For small-scale farmers in Zimbabwe getting access to tractors for use on their farmlands to boost their yield has always been difficult.

Tractor owners will be able to offer their tractors to other farmers using the Vaya Tractor App, once they finish tilling their own fields.

Many farmers can’t afford to buy one due to the high cost, while the government, which is the major supplier of tractors, is not able to meet more than 4% of their requirements.

This is all part of the “sharing economy,” and regardless if you think its entrepreneurial or exploitative, it is now fully part of developing country economies.

Cassava has launched is Tractor platform to address the prevalent problem of crippling poverty and poor crop yields among small-scale farmers.

Farm machinery is never cheap, and for many smallholder farmers, a simple tractor can be beyond their capacity to own and maintain. That’s where new services are allowing farmers to rent equipment from one another, reducing the cost of ownership and increasing access to needed farm machinery.

The market opportunity for contract ploughing and mechanization is over $500 million per annum. This is huge for the agriculture   make it less laborious for all our farmers.