Standard Bank wins 2022 BAI Global Innovation award

Standard Bank recently made news when it received the 2022 BAI Global Innovation Award for Innovation in Community Sustainability for its OneFarm Share platform. In the same year, Niki Neumann, Standard Bank’s Head of Agribusiness Platforms and Innovation, also received BAI’s inaugural Rising Star Award. The Rising Star Award celebrates up-and-coming innovative leaders making a positive impact within their organisations and across the financial services industry.

BAI is an independent, non-profit organisation that delivers actionable financial services insights. The annual awards celebrate achievements in innovation, including the pursuit of bold solutions that enhance client experience, the implementation of modern technologies, and the improvement of the lives and livelihoods of employees, clients and communities.

OneFarm Share is a platform powered by Standard Bank in partnership with AgFinTech HelloChoice that seeks to create a more efficient agri-food chain by taking a sector-wide view of agriculture. Operating across South Africa, OneFarm Share was born from the need to address the ever-widening food provision gap, where millions of people face uncertainty about their next meal.

OneFarm Share addresses hunger by solving the challenge of farm and fresh-produce waste and, instead, channelling nutritious fresh produce to the relief sector while also helping smallholder farmers to access markets. In addition, OneFarm Share provides ESG- and CSI-as-a-service for corporates and donor organisations, offering a transparent vehicle to channel funding for food security, enterprise development and sustainable farming practices. By effectively preventing waste, OneFarm Share provides a sustainable solution for food insecurity in South Africa, while also catalysing economic development across the agric sector.

Since its inception in 2020, OneFarm Share has helped more than 2 700 registered charities feed over 1.2 million people by distributing over 14 600 tonnes of fresh produce to beneficiary organisations, and cumulatively delivering over 58 million individual meals. The programme has also supported 354 smallholder farmers (of which 106 are women) with access to markets, market-related pricing for their produce, same-day payment and increased access to logistics, business and agronomy support. To date, OneFarm Share has generated R19.8 million in revenue for woman-owned small agric enterprises.

Neumann believes OneFarm Share demonstrates the power of innovation, digitisation and partnerships by providing meaningful and impactful solutions across the agriculture value chain, “showing how platform and alternative business models can help address Africa’s most pressing social, economic and environmental challenges”.

The success of OneFarm Share in driving broader inclusion in agriculture also “presents exciting opportunities for young women interested in technology and innovation and willing to make a difference in a business sector critically linked to the stability and future prosperity of our whole society,” says Neumann.

“Standard Bank’s vision of driving Africa’s growth by leveraging agricultural value chains to address food security was critical in creating OneFarm Share. This ecosystem view means that OneFarm Share represents a broad partnership in which every participant and contributor is committed to building a broader, more inclusive and more effective food production system built on accessible funding and better distribution capability in South Africa”, says Bill Blackie, Chief Executive of Standard Bank’s Business & Commercial Banking division.

“While it is an honour to receive this award, it also inspires me to continue to drive positive change and growth by helping women play a meaningful role in agriculture, food security, technology and financial services,” says Neumann. Since no award is possible without a team combining to do great things, I would also like to say “thank you to my team, colleagues, our families and business stakeholders for the support and for sharing in the vision,” adds Neumann.  

More generally, Neumann and the Standard Bank team look forward to applying the platform business learnings developed on OneFarm Share in South Africa to the rich opportunities that exist across Standard Bank’s broad ecosystem. “By leveraging technology and innovation across our 19-market African presence, we will continue to drive Africa’s growth by partnering with all its entrepreneurs and businesses to turn challenge into opportunity,” concludes Neumann.