Blockchain-based model to enhance the financing of fairtrade producers

Preliminary study

Description

Problem addressedCertified Fairtrade producers (e.g. by “Max Havelaar”) in developing countries (organised as cooperatives) often have very stable business models and regularly face investment opportunities (e.g. expansion of production or value chain) for which they need external financial sources (e.g. credit financing). Unfortunately, access to financing is often missing due to a lack of financial infrastructure in the respective countries.Several investment funds are already addressing this issue in small-scale agriculture. However, more flexible financing (e.g. working capital) is often hard to access, especially for medium-sized organisations.Project goalThe goal of the project is to enable access to financing for Fairtrade producers by allowing Fairtrade consumers in Switzerland to invest directly in loans to these Fairtrade producers. Financial access is provided by developing a blockchain-based integrated financial value chain which includes all actors along the value chain, including Fairtrade consumers, producers, and supply chain partners.The project is a interdisciplinary preliminary study including the economic, legal, and technological perspective.

Key data

Projectlead

Prof. Dr. Beat Affolter

Project team

Prof. Dr. Harald Bärtschi, Andreas Schweizer, Micha Steiner, Prof. Dr. Jörg Osterrieder, Dr. Peter Heinrich

Project partners

FairCapital SA

Project status

completed, 06/2019 - 09/2019

Institute/Centre

Institute for Financial Management (IFI); Institute for Data Science (IDS); Institute of Business Information Technology (IWI); Institute of Enterprise Law (IUR)

Funding partner

Innovationsscheck / Projekt Nr. 37010.1 INNO-SBM

Project budget

15'000 CHF