Rent to Own Zambia Ltd

Founded in 2010 Rent to Own (RTO) is a social business that seeks to provide high-impact assets to micro-entrepreneurs in rural Zambia. These assets - such as refrigerators irrigation pumps and solar equipment help catalyze business growth and improvement in prosperity for clients who do not have access to such equipment in underdeveloped and disadvantaged communities.

By end of 2016 RTO had worked with 3000 entrepreneurs and is on track to sell over 1 million assets on credit by 2025.

About us

Rent to Own is an impact-focused for-profit enterprise based in Zambia. RTO distributes and sells farm and small-business assets in rural areas with a package of financing and services that enables small-scale farmers and entrepreneurs to purchase and profit from income-generating equipment. RTO offers a range of products including irrigation pumps, agricultural processing equipment, and retail refrigeration units.

Farmers & rural entrepreneurs have poor access to productive assets. They face an absence of commercial distribution networks; lack of knowledge to choose & maintain products; and limited income, options for saving, and access to credit. Small-scale farmers and rural business owners seek these assets in order to increase their income. But banks, MFIs, and equipment vendors do not address these gaps and do not supply this market.

RTO’s package of services addresses these obstacles to serve the rural market for productive assets. RTO offers its products together with delivery to clients’ farms or businesses; selection of appropriate, durable equipment; any needed accessories; training on operation and maintenance; and a tailored payment schedule. Assets are delivered ready for same-day use. These services enable farmers and rural entrepreneurs to successfully use the assets to grow their income and complete their payments to RTO. RTO’s impact-driven model succeeds when, and because, its clients succeed.

This package allows RTO to supply a large and otherwise unserved rural market.

Our History

In 2008 Patrun Chikolwizu was working for a Zambian honey company when Mark Hemsworth came to join him in working with rural honey farmers. Together they saw first-hand that growth opportunities were everywhere in Zambia’s rural small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) sector – that farmers and small business owners could create wealth in their own communities, if only they had the right access to financing and proper support that would allow for investment in their farms and businesses.

Mark and Patrun combined their entrepreneurial capacity to formulate an approach to connect these entrepreneurs to the assets they needed to grow their business. From 2010, the company began trials of its basic model: assets offered on hire-purchase in rural areas, through local sales agents. Over the following two years RTO trialed a range of products, adjusting the model and expanding to new areas. In 2013 RTO launched a major iteration of its model, built on a new back-end system combining mobile technology for field data collection and a cloud-based client data management system. This platform enables a fast, efficient approval process, cost-effective management of a large number of clients, and instant reporting to management.
From 2013 the company has grown its operations from five districts to ten, and has doubled its sales each year.