An agricultural financing platform

Abstract

This project aims at reducing the problem of difficulty in finding potential investors by farmers through providing an interactive online platform that enables potential investors to look up for farmers as well as farmers looking up for the potential investors. The main features of this system include; an online interface with user accounts for both farmers and investors to interact and share details, the farmer has an added functionality of marketing his products and viewing market analysis in terms of demand and market price of the available items. The investor can also view market analysis showing items and their demand rate. We used different data collection techniques such as observation and interaction with the similar existing systems, interviews and questionnaires for the success of our project. We also had a chance to interact with the farmers at Mukono Vanilla Growers association and from here we got extremely motivated to go on with the project since the idea was highly welcomed. After interviewing a number of farmers, we ascertained the stake holder’s needs which helped in achieving the objectives of the project Observation helped us get the flow of information between the farmers and the investors as well as observing the functionalities of the existing related systems. The questionnaire enabled us to get detailed information on the activities and how they are carried out in the process of finding investors. We analyzed the data collected using excel and from the analysis we carried out process modeling under system design where we drew context diagrams, DFDs and ERDs.