NIGERIA – Tingo International, an investment company focused on identifying and making targeted acquisitions that have synergistic characteristics with its other portfolio companies, has partnered with MELD, an open-source, non-custodial liquidity protocol that securely lends and borrows both crypto and fiat currencies.
This important partnership between parties is designed to deliver a highly efficient DeFi lending and borrowing protocol to customers in Africa such as decentralized low interest loans and opportunities to complement Nigeria’s digital currency, the eNaira.
Its primary goal is to invite the US$2 trillion-dollar crypto economy to invest in African farmers, and thereby support efforts to increase global food security to meet UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and provide greater opportunity for all.
Under the partnership, Tingo will integrate the MELD protocol as a stand-alone application into Tingo-branded mobile devices and leverage on its already existing subscribers to gain users for the MELD service.
Tingo offers a comprehensive platform service using smartphones, to deliver a marketplace which enables nearly 10 million subscribers, within and outside of the agricultural sector, to manage their commercial activities of growing and selling their products to market participants both domestically and internationally.
The ecosystem provides a one-stop-shop solution to enable such subscribers to manage everything from airtime top-ups, bill pay services for utilities and other service providers, access to insurance services, and microfinance to support their value chain from seed to sale.
According to Tingo, a flexible and low-cost DeFi lending and borrowing service will unlock a great deal of value to current and potential users.
Users will enjoy additional services like earning yield on latent capital, getting access to fiat while maintaining a crypto position and sending and receiving funds with very low charges.
“The gold stable token proposed in this DeFi initiative will give international investors’ confidence with inward investment, which will lead to a revolution in the way agriculture on our continent will be funded,” said Chris Cleverly, President, Tingo International.
The group’s integration of the MELD protocol is calculated to help Tingo grow its presence in the Nigerian market and expand beyond the country.
Tingo aims to be Africa’s leading agri-fintech player that transforms rural farming communities to connect through its proprietary platform to meet their complete needs from inputs, agronomy, off-take, and marketplace, delivering a sustainable income in an impactful way.
Through its innovative platform Nwassa, Africa’s first digital agriculture ecosystem, Tingo empowers rural businesses to access markets.
Farm produce can be shipped from farms across Africa to any part of the world, in both retail and wholesale quantities.
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