Inflection Point: Unlocking growth in the era of farmer finance

A new study from The Initiative for Smallholder Finance and The MasterCard Foundation Rural and Agricultural Finance Learning Lab, sheds light on how smallholder farmers in Africa and other parts of the developing world could see their access to crucial financial services improved. There are more than 270 million smallholder farmers in Africa, Latin America and South and Southeast Asia. They require more than US$200 billion in financing to grow their businesses and improve their livelihoods, yet financial service providers today meet only a quarter of that need.

The study, Inflection Point: Unlocking Growth in the Era of Farmer Finance suggests that concerted efforts around customer-centricity, progressive partnerships and smart subsidies have the potential to change the sector’s growth trajectory to best serve smallholder farmers.