01
Records are scattered
Deliveries, savings and repayments sit in cooperative spreadsheets and ledgers. Lenders never see them, so a member's track record counts for nothing.
Credit infrastructure for agricultural finance
Turn cooperative records into bankable credit decisions.
BRIDGE brings together the production, savings and repayment records farmer cooperatives already keep, and turns them into explainable credit limits banks can act on. Approved credit reaches the farmer as inputs, through vendors the bank trusts.
Explainable, versioned limitsOpt-in data sharingBuilt in Kampala, Uganda
What a bank receives
-
A credit limit for each member
Worked out from deliveries, SACCO savings and how advances were repaid.
-
The reasons behind it
Plain statements of what raised or lowered the limit, and the rule version that made it.
-
Only what members agreed to share
Members opt in before any bank sees their records, and banks see totals, not raw rows.
-
Credit that buys inputs
Approved credit is a single-use token, redeemed with a vendor the bank works with.
The problem
Farm lending is priced for risk nobody can see.
Cooperatives hold years of deliveries, savings and repayments, but lenders never see them. Without evidence, smallholders are treated as an unknown, and an unknown is priced as high risk.
02
No verifiable income
Seasonal farm income is undocumented, so credit officers decline or decide on gut feel, and price for the worst case.
03
Cash gets diverted
Cash loans drift to household needs, and lenders lose sight of them the moment they are paid out.
Where records are missing, risk is assumed to be high, and capital stops at the farm gate.
BRIDGE replaces assumption with evidence
Platform
One console, from the collection centre to the loan.
Cooperatives, banks and input vendors each get their own portal on the same records, so everyone works from one version of the truth.
-
01
Upload
The cooperative uploads members, deliveries, savings and advances.
-
02
Score
BRIDGE estimates a credit limit and score for every member, with reasons.
-
03
Apply
The cooperative files an application for a member: the amount and the reason.
-
04
Approve
Connected banks review it in their window. The first to approve picks a vendor.
-
05
Redeem
The vendor redeems the single-use token, and the member collects inputs.
Members in one place
Every account a member holds, production and SACCO, with their advances and credit limit.
Sub-cooperatives
Primary societies and collection centres under a union, with filters across members and accounts.
Advances repaid from produce
Deductions recorded on deliveries repay advances, and overdue ones stand out.
Applications with deadlines
Each bank sets how long an application stays open to it, and the admin sees every decision.
Tokens, not cash
Approved credit is issued as a token valid for 30 days by default, revocable by the bank.
Access on approval
People request access to a portal, confirm their email, and Ngovu staff approve them.
The risk framework
A limit you can defend, not just display.
Built for the credit committee asking why a limit is what it is, and for the reviewer asking which records supported it.
- Reasons attached to every limit
- A versioned rule, with every past version kept
- Each estimate stored with its inputs and rule version
- Biodata such as marital status is never an input
01
Records in three groups
Production (deliveries, farm profiles), financial (SACCO savings, advances) and behavioural (repayment, meetings, trainings). Each cooperative's data plan keeps at least one field from each.
02
A limit from the evidence
A share of recent delivery value plus a share of SACCO savings, adjusted for on-time repayment and how regularly the member delivers, less what is still owed.
03
A score out of 100
Weighted across repayment, delivery regularity, membership length and participation, so two members with the same limit can still be told apart.
04
A rule you can tune
Staff adjust every weight, preview the effect on real members before saving, and can return to any earlier version at any time.
Institutions
Built for everyone between the farmer and the loan.
Cooperatives
Turn the records you already keep into credit for your members.
- Import members, deliveries, SACCO and advances from Excel or CSV
- See every member's accounts, advances and credit limit
- File applications for members, or for the cooperative itself
Banks and lenders
Reach farmers through the cooperatives you work with.
- A credit limit per member, worked out across all your connected cooperatives
- Decide applications within a window you set
- Issue credit as tokens, and revoke them if needed
Input vendors
Supply farmers with credit that is already approved.
- Redeem tokens from the banks you partner with
- See which tokens are live, redeemed or expired
- Tokens come only from banks you are connected to
Trust and privacy
Farmers choose who sees their records.
Consent, access and explainability are part of how BRIDGE works, not a policy page added afterwards.
Opt-in sharing
A member's records reach a bank only once they agree to share them. Until then, banks see an account, not a person.
Connected partners only
A bank sees only the cooperatives it is connected to, and a vendor only the tokens issued to it. No institution sees another's portfolio.
Totals, not raw records
Banks see each account's records counted and summed, never listed row by row.
Explainable limits
Every limit lists what it was based on and the version of the rule that made it, so a decision can be traced and defended.
Approved access
Every portal user is approved by Ngovu staff after confirming their email address.
Credit that can't be diverted
Tokens are single-use, tied to one vendor and time-limited, so credit buys the inputs it was meant for.
Integration
Starts with the spreadsheets cooperatives already keep.
No new system to adopt. Cooperatives upload Excel or CSV files in any column order, and BRIDGE checks every row before anything is saved.
- Columns in any order, and each cooperative chooses which optional columns it keeps
- Every row checked; nothing is saved until the file passes
- Warnings to confirm before anything unusual goes in
- Files up to 250,000 rows, with an import history for each cooperative
Template
Member accounts
Members, their accounts, groups and sub-cooperatives.
Template
Production
Deliveries per product: quantity, value, grade and deductions.
Template
SACCO
Deposits, withdrawals, interest and fees.
Template
Advances
Advances given and repaid, with fees and due dates.
Template
Farm profile
Acreage, plants or cows, tenure and certification.
Template
Member activity
Meetings, trainings, input purchases and share contributions.
About
Ngovu Technologies
We build BRIDGE in Kampala, Uganda, so that a farmer's record of work can stand as evidence for credit.
Cuthbert
Markets and credit
Richard
Product engineering
Victor
Decision modelling
See BRIDGE on your own records.
Cooperatives, banks and vendors: we'll walk you through the console.