Agriculture finance support facility: Lessons learned
This report (PDF) by the Agriculture Finance Support Facility’s (AgriFin) shares lessons on agricultural finance in the hope of guiding future initiatives and programs aimed at expanding the provision of agriculture finance services in developing countries. The report has two main chapters: the first deals with lessons learned from the design and implementation of AgriFin’s Technical Assistance program, while the second covers the lessons emerging from the design and implementation of the program. AgriFin aims to provide technical assistance and knowledge support primarily to financial institutions to help them develop their business models for financing smallholder farmers. The Facility established a Technical Assistance program and a Knowledge and Networks initiative. Both programs has shown good results and therefore provides interesting lessons learned. The overall AgriFin’s experience has shown that increased lending to agriculture can be achieved by bridging the knowledge gap that often hinders banks from embracing a market segment often viewed as too risky or fragmented to be profitable. The target audience includes development organizations with programs involved in agriculture finance, technical assistance and knowledge management initiatives aimed at improving financial institutions’ capacity in agriculture lending.