By CASSEY  KAYULA –
AT LEAST one million smallholder farmers in Zambia and two other countries will benefit from a US$25-million AgriFin Accelerate
programme which was launched yesterday.
The AgriFin Accelerate Programme will help close the gap in access to financial and information services experienced by smallholder farmers.
The six-year US$2- million initiative is expected to benefit at least one million smallholder farmers in Zambia, Kenya and Tanzania.
Mercy Corps programme director Leesa Shrader said the programme would collaborate with smallholder farmers and diverse actors to understand barriers to the access and use of digital financial and information services.
She was speaking at the launch of the programme in Lusaka yesterday.
“In Zambia, more than 70 per cent of the population is engaged in or drives it’s livelihood from agriculture related activities, however, the demand for agriculture financing largely remains unmet,”she said.
Ms Shrader said financial service providers like banks and mobile money operators faced many challenges in improving farmers’ access to finance to raise agriculture productivity.
“New technologies and advances in mobile banking, as well as the increasing integration of smallholder farmers into better organised value chains can promote solutions and affordable delivery channels that help close the inclusion gap for smallholder farmers who lack access to basic financial products and services,” Ms shrader said.
Financial inclusion at the MasterCard Foundation programme manager Olga Morawczynski said the AgriFin Accelerate Programme would support and increase the number of emerging digital farmers to chart a new course.
“We are pleased to support this partnership because it represents a major step forward in Zambia to leveraging technology in order to Increase smallholder farmer income by enabling smallholder farmers to access digital financial services and markets more easily while strengthening their capacity and skills to utilise digital information,”she said.