Affordable finance is important for many farmers around the world, but if you're a smallholder who's living on under a dollar a day, then purchasing a new equipment will be difficult, regardless of the interest rate on a loan. In many parts of the world the sharing economy has always been extensive, but the spread of cheap Android smartphones has opened up new possibilities. Hello Tractor is a Nigerian startup, that seizes on these opportunities. It provides small-scale farmers with a simple app service through which they rent a tractor for a limited time and thereby get access to a mechanization, that would otherwise be too expensive for them. The sales manager of Hello Tractor, Aissa Mazou, gives the facts: So Hello Tractor platform gives an opportunity to really tap into a network of users that can really not afford mechanization. Because on average our users have 1,8 to 3 hectares This represent 90% of the farming population in Nigeria, so we do rely a lot of on clusterization to ensure, that we reach a critical mass, before the tractors go to the farm. So it is very important to us to deliver service to the smallholders, those who are up to between 1,8 to 3 hectares. Usually a farmer starts to get mechanized around 5 hectares, but Hello Tractor is opening up the opportunity to receive mechanization, even when you're below that level. This service can have huge consequences for the farmers, as the step into mechanization is of great value for these smallholders. Mechanization is so crucial in the crop production cycle for farmers. It has the ability to really increase and impact the yields of the farmers and their revenue in so many ways. The ability to plant 40 time faster with mechanization than manual labor. Their ability to increase up to 40% their revenue stream. And it's really, at the core, an opportunity for them to reach their potential revenue and by relying on agriculture to improve food security - because Africa has the biggest arable land available today on Earth - so it is very crucial for African smallholder farmers to be mechanized, and to do it at a lower cost. To gather as many farmers, and as much demand as possible, Hello Tractor depends on booking agents. These agents are specialized farmers, who speak English fluently and possess a smartphone. When a farmer wants a tractor service he goes to our booking agents. We have today a network of 300 booking agents and we plan to increase that number in different locations. Basically, the booking agent role is to mitigate the fact, that farmers don't necessarily use Android phones and smartphones. So they place the orders on their behalf - these booking agents are trained and certified Hello Tractor booking agents. They put all the information we need, to plan on time the delivery of the service in that community. The agents can then, in turn, help the farmer with making his booking. For a farmer to get access to a service, he needs to place a booking on our platform, and he needs to define what kind of service, and when - where - and if he accept the cost. So there's different elements on the booking platform, that we receive and that we cluster and aggregate with other requests in the same area. In vast countries like Nigeria, where the population is very dispersed, demand for mechanized equipment is also very dispersed. In such cases, smartphone technology provides tremendous support to the sharing economy.