The solution
Chad's target provinces had a practical bottleneck: farmers needed better seed, subsidy transparency and timely advice, but there were not enough extension agents to visit everyone regularly.
ProPAD's answer was a hub-and-spoke operating model. An eight-person call center in N'Djamena handled advisory calls in French and local languages, while an e-voucher system distributed subsidized maize, sorghum, sesame, pesticides, NPK fertilizer and urea to registered producers.
The clever part was the last mile. The call center did not pretend that every problem could be solved remotely; it used 250 trained farmer relays, equipped with bicycles, as dispatchable local help when an on-site visit was needed.
World Bank reporting said the center had handled 118,438 calls from more than 30,000 producers, the e-extension system reached 60,000 households, and 133,656 producers received improved seeds, fertilizers and pesticides through the platform.
What it achieved
Route advice by phone, then dispatch locals
Why it worked
The call center made scarce expertise reachable without travel.
Local-language service reduced the friction of asking for help.
Farmer relays preserved field presence without requiring every case to start with an expert visit.
E-vouchers made input subsidies more traceable than manual distribution.
What can be applied
Where expert staff are scarce, a small remote team can cover more ground if it triages requests and sends trained local intermediaries only when needed.
Aftermath
The platform provided over 5,000 tons of improved seeds to farmer organizations across agroecological zones. World Bank reporting cited yields rising by up to 80% after ProPAD introduced new seed varieties, and a 2020 procurement notice shows Chad had already hired operational support for e-voucher and e-extension systems.
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