Rural and Agricultural Finance, USAID Resources (2007)

Description
For What's New visitors, the latest addition is RAFI Note 10 on Conflict Affected States.

The Rural and Agricultural Finance Initiative, a joint effort of USAID's Office of Agriculture and Microenterprise Development office, offers a variety of resources on this topic. It includes the RAFI Notes, a series of case studies, technical notes, and practical guides and tools, and training materials on rural and agricultural finance. The resources explore two separate but complementary approaches to rural and agricultural finance. The first approach takes the financial sector as the starting point, emphasizing the important role of financial institutions in facilitating access to a broad range of financial services. The second, the value chain approach, takes the production "chain" as the starting point, emphasizing the financing that is supplied within the agricultural value chain (e.g., input suppliers, processors, intermediaries and buyers.) The RAF Initiative and the RAFI Notes series propose a complementary approach that builds off of an understanding of the different actors in the value chain, while highlighting the current and potential roles that financial institutions play.

Issue 1 (Jan 2005), A Fresh Look at Rural and Agricultural Finance, provides an introduction to the topic and argues for a complimentary approach to rural and agricultural finance that includes both financial institutions and a value chain focused approach.

Issue 2 (June, 2005), Value Chain Finance, provides an overview of the nature and potential of value-chain finance, as well as some of the lessons learned in using value-chain finance to promote agricultural sector development. It profiles some common forms of value-chain finance, discussing the advantages and limitations of each. The note closes by highlighting the implications for program design, drawing on recent experience using value chain analysis in Mozambique. This paper summarizes many of the issues discussed in 'Value Chains and Their Significance for Addressing the Rural Finance Challenge,' a microREPORT by Bob Fries and Banu Akin. The link to this paper is below.

Other RAFI Notes available below are:
Issue 3: The Role of Financial Institutions (Dec, 2005)
Issue 6: Mitigating Weather Risk (Aug, 2006)
Issue 10: Conflict Affected States (June, 2007)
Issue 11: Rural Leasing (Dec 2006)

The RAF Initiative now offers a complete set of materials for a seminar series. They are available to download here.

More resources will be posted as they become available.



Associated Activities and Documents
Synthesis Documents
»	Value Chains and their Significance for Addressing the Rural Finance Challenge, ACDI/VOCA, USAID AMAP, 2004
»	Strategic Alliances for Financial Services and Market Linkages in Rural Areas, SEEP 2005-7