The Opportunity: Blockchain, Tokenisation, and Programmable Money
The constraints revealed in the CBK data are not mysteries. They are known problems with known characteristics: poor collateral, climate uncertainty, opaque supply chains, and high transaction costs for small loans. What has changed in recent years is that a set of technologies now exists that can address each of these pain points directly.
Programmable money solves the trust deficit in disbursement
Smart contracts can release funds automatically when pre-agreed conditions are met. Imagine a working capital loan to a maize farmer that disburses in tranches: the first when certified seeds are purchased, the second when satellite imagery confirms planting, the third when weather data shows adequate rainfall during the growing season. This is not theoretical.
Safaricom’ s DigiFarm platform, through its Jipange product, already extends cash advances to over one million tea farmers via M-PESA, with near-zero default rates in its pilot phase. The next step is embedding these conditions into programmable payment rails, where money moves only when real world conditions are verified.
Tokenisation turns illiquid agricultural assets into bankable collateral
The collateral problem is not that farmers have no assets. It is that their assets, standing crops, warehouse inventories, future harvests, even the trees themselves, are inv- isible to the formal financial system. Tokenisation changes that. Whrrl, a blockchain powered warehouse receipt platform, has tokenised over $ 800 million worth of commodities and facilitated more than $ 25 million in digital loans for 70,000 farmers across 7 countries, including Kenya. In Brazil, Agrotoken allows farmers to use tokenised soy, corn, and wheat as collateral for credit and trade, processing R $ 1.3 billion( roughly $ 250 million) in tokenised assets in 2024 alone, covering 616,000 hectares. These are not pilot projects anymore. They are operating at scale.
Closer to home, Kenya’ s own Warehouse Receipt System Council launched its electronic warehouse receipt system( e-WRS) in 2025, integrating with the Nairobi Coffee Exchange. This is the foundational infrastructure that blockchain tokenisation can build on, turning a warehouse receipt from a piece of paper into a programmable, tradeable digital asset that any lender can verify in seconds.
Supply chain transparency lowers risk and cost for lenders
When a bank cannot trace what happens to a loan between disbursement and repayment, it prices in that uncertainty through higher interest rates. Blockchain based traceability, from farm to processor to exporter, gives lenders a real time view of the asset their loan is secured against. This is not about replacing human judgment. It is about giving lenders the data they need to say yes more often, at lower rates, to borrowers they currently refuse.
The net effect: expanding agriculture’ s share of the loan book without increasing systemic risk
If tokenised warehouse receipts, programmable disbursement, and verified supply chain data can reduce information asymmetry and collateral gaps, banks can lend more to agriculture without taking on more risk. The CBK’ s own data shows agriculture’ s NPL ratio is already proportional to its loan share. The bottleneck is not repayment behaviour. It is underwriting infrastructure.
The Road Forward
The data is clear. Traditional credit models are not scaling fast enough for Kenya’ s agricultural potential. The tools to change that already exist. Programmable payment rails are live on M-PESA. Tokenised warehouse receipts are operational across East Africa. Brazil and India have demonstrated that blockchain backed agricultural collateral works at national scale.
The question is no longer whether programmable money and tokenisation can help close the gap between agriculture’ s 22 % GDP contribution and its 4.4 % share of bank credit. The question is how quickly regulators, banks, and AgriFinance founders will deploy them.
Kenya has every ingredient it needs: a world class mobile money ecosystem, a central bank that publishes granular agricultural data, a new electronic warehouse receipt system, and a generation of founders building at the intersection of blockchain and farming.
When a bank cannot trace what happens to a loan between disbursement and repayment, it prices in that uncertainty through higher interest rates. Blockchain based traceability, from farm to processor to exporter, gives lenders a real time view of the asset their loan is secured against. This is not about replacing human judgment. It is about giving lenders the data they need to say yes more often, at lower rates, to borrowers they currently refuse.
The next chapter of agricultural finance in this country will not be written by banks alone. It will be co-authored by the builders who understand that a coffee tree( what we are building at Project Mocha), a warehouse full of grain, or a season’ s harvest is not just a liability to be managed. It is an asset waiting to be unlocked.
Peter Maina is the Co-Founder Project Mocha. He has spent over a decade taking products from idea to market across AgriTech, Fintech, and Web3. He sees technology not as the destination but as the bridge connecting underserved communities to profitable, meaningful livelihoods. You can commune via email at: Peter @ projectmocha. com.
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