The AFIDE Story: The Saving Culture
Saving is an integral habit of daily earners, it has over time become a culture and to a meaningful extent a key source of their business survival. However, a major ill of this activity is that, it has excluded the finance of daily earners from the nation’s GDP as their liquid cash goes directly to thrift collection where they believe their earnings are safe while the thrift custodians leave their funds out of circulation as it has affected, not just the economic growth of the nation but also truncated the ability of the funds to be used for other amenities that will enhance their lives.
A credible research carried out by National Association of Nigerian Traders in the mid of 2019 showed that 67% of Nigerian traders’ daily funds are excluded from the nation’s economy. A gross of over 600 Billion Naira, what a huge loss upon the nation! These funds would have added value to the nation’s state of economy only if they were allowed to circulate and put to appropriate use. Furthermore, majority of these daily earners are prone to financial vulnerability as quite a number of them are unbanked and this has resulted into restricting them from being financially secured to acquiring loans from banks and enjoying other social benefits such as life, medical and trade insurance. The research further reviewed that many traders have gone out of business as a result of job hazards such as accident, health issues and inability to further their trade business as a result of loss and other trade casualties.
In other to create a platform that includes the finances of daily earners in the economic system that will also suit their cooperative model of daily savings as a way to better their standard of living, AFIDE — which means Agricultural and Financial Inclusion of Daily Earners, a subsidiary of FarmKonnect Nigeria, a social enterprise and the first Agricultural Real Estate that permits all and sundry to partake in the dividends of modern day Agriculture has created a cooperative system that allows daily earners benefit immensely from Agriculture as their entrusted funds become a guarantee to secure loans from banks in partnership with AFIDE and also become a beneficiary of trade, life and medical insurance respectively.
The AFIDE system still preserves the saving and thrift collection culture among daily earners as it aids the inclusion of their finance into the socio-economic system of the nation as it has given them the privilege to earn and benefit greatly from modern day Agriculture and also secure them a better life.
