WINDHOEK – CTA hosted a conference on the promotion of inclusive finance models for farmers in Africa in Nairobi, Kenya, from July 13 to 17. The conference consisted of two parts. The first part was the Second African Continental Briefing that addressed the rural finance gap through agricultural value chain finance. It brought together representatives from African farmers associations and finance institutions involved in financing agricultural value chains.
The second part was the main conference with the theme “Revolutionising finance for agri value chains”. It was attended by more than 700 delegates from the ACP countries including national and regional farmers associations, agri value chain stakeholders, commercial banks, central banks, credit associations, commodity exchanges, ICTs, governments and the African Union Commission. Wallie Roux from the NAU attended the conference. His attendance was made possible by CTA.
African agriculture is poised for rapid growth to meet the increasing demand from urban and global markets. Proper access to finance is the driver of agricultural growth. Evidence of this is the AU’s Maputo Declaration with the commitment to allocate at least 10 percent of national budgetary resources to agriculture, as well as the implementation of the CAADP programme. In this regard the conference focused on new mechanisms to permit capital market investors to become agricultural financiers, especially in light of the innovations in ICTs that made such financing easier and cheaper.
More information on the conference can be found at: www.fin4ag.org
CTA: Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation
ACP: African, Caribbean and Pacific countries
ICT: Information and Communication Technology
NAU: Namibia Agricultural Union
AU: African Union
CAADP: Comprehensive African Agricultural Development Plan