PEG Africa plans to provide 160 solar-irrigation systems on credit to underserved smallholder farmers in Senegal to help improve the productivity of vegetable farms and reduce reliance on polluting fossil fuels or tiring manual labour.
The small-scale solar irrigation market is underdeveloped, and high upfront costs are a key barrier to improving farm productivity in Senegal and other African markets. The scanty financing that is available for rural smallholder farmers comes at unaffordable interest rates and the farmers also require additional agronomic support, which currently is inadequate.
Through the PREO project, PEG Africa – one of West Africa’s largest Pay-as-you-go (PAYG) solar company is partnering with two leading solar-irrigation suppliers to provide 160 solar-pumps to small-holder farmers in Senegal focused on vegetable production. The project will introduce 7 types of pumps that will be sold on credit to farmers across the country. PEG intends to further improve the distribution, supply chain, and after-sales network through PREO’s support.
A successful PREO project will help scale small-scale irrigation to several thousands of farm-families in Senegal over the next five years.