LitFin Intelligence is a service, built in Dar es Salaam, that appraises agricultural credit files. Each file is read by Mwikila, our AI Senior Agriculture & Finance Consultant, the way a senior credit officer would read it, and he explains each conclusion he reaches. Your credit committee still makes the decision.
An officer opens an agricultural credit file and works through it with Mwikila. He reads every page of it, asks the officer the questions the file raises, and writes the appraisal. Your institution keeps a record of how each file was worked, so whoever picks it up next can see what each judgement was based on.
Today it is used by lenders: banks and microfinance institutions appraise agricultural credit files with it, and a lender can pass the record of each appraisal to its guarantor. Farmers, farmer groups and agricultural companies can also bring us their loan application, and we prepare it with them for the lender they choose. Services that farmers, village-based agronomists and buyers would use themselves are being built, and none of them is live yet.
Today we work only in Tanzania, with lenders that finance agriculture and the guarantors who back their loans. The rest of East Africa is a plan for later.