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Financial institutions are often reluctant to serve smallholder farmers in rural areas due to the inherent risks of agriculture and high transaction costs, particularly for family farming. Increasing access to financial services for rural economic actors is crucial to accelerate economic growth and rural development. For example, since its inception, IFAD’s inclusive rural finance activities have supported inclusive rural economic development and mobilized the private sector to benefit smallholders and rural agribusinesses. Co-organized by the Inclusive Rural Finance Network (IRF) and FARM-D (hosted by PARM), the webinar brought together rural finance experts from IFAD’s West and Central Africa programme teams, as well as refinancing fund experts from Société Générale du Cameroun and Mali’s Refinancing Facility for Decentralized Financial Systems, who presented IFAD’s inclusive rural finance policy and shared lessons learned from different smallholder financing mechanisms in West and Central Africa programmes. The discussions highlighted possible strategies towards expanding financial services in rural areas.