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Promoting Access to Finance through Participatory Loan Monitoring & Evaluation Systems, increasing the bankability of smallholder farmers & their Farm enterprises

Challenge

Access to finance and farm input is a major challenge for smallholder farmers in Africa. Programs developed to tackle this problems experience series of challenges such as loan default, poor extension services, poor field supervision including monitoring and evaluation of field performance. Agriculture loan default rates have been persistently high as farmers have failed to pay back loans due to poor economic condition or lack of willingness to pay back loans.

Solution

EXAF agricultural finance Monitoring & Evaluation System is developed specifically for financial institutions, processors and other value chain actors designing and implementing contract farming, out-grower schemes, block farming, and or cluster farming. It offers data collection, input distribution strategies, reporting, evaluation, and harvest aggregation strategies and loan recovery.
A partner has access to our online field trackers, activity monitoring tools and input distribution mechanisms. This project also provides awareness campaign through radio programs and community road shows, training and materials provided through the in-person and online training targeting farmers, frontline extension agents and others.

The project work with credit providers to change their strategy from just being credit providers to building up relationship with borrowers in order to improve the situation. Farmers capacity is strengthened to inculcating the habit of financial resources management and utilization.

Result

This project provides insights on financial services and products that is promoting agricultural productivity in Africa to financial service providers, processors, policy-makers and other agricultural practitioners in Africa who are seeking to make informed decisions on effectively financing smallholder farmers and farms.

Directly the project will lead to increased financial access for smallholder farmers, reduced risk leading to higher loan recovery rate. Through training on climate smart agriculture and ag-tech the project will contribute to increased productivity and minimize loan diversion.