Tanzania Farmers to Benefit from USD25m Program
Smallholder farmers in Tanzania will
benefit from the USD25m AgriFin Accelerate program, launched in Tanzania on
July 25th 2016. The aim is to close the gap in access to financial and
information services experienced by smallholder farmers. The program operates
under Mercy Corps, a global humanitarian agency located in the U.S., and is
being supported by the MasterCard Foundation. AgriFin Accelerate will operate
in Tanzania, Kenya and Zambia over the next 6 years. The program is expected to
benefit at least 1m smallholder farmers. To achieve this, the program will work
with smallholder farmers to understand barriers to the access and use of
digital financial and information services. Consequently, it will develop
appropriate solutions and work to implement them with relevant stakeholders.
“New technologies and advances in mobile banking, as well as the increasing
integration of smallholder farmers into better organized 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,” said Leesa Shrader, the Program Director at Mercy
Corps. Tanzania Smallholder Farmers and Financial Services According to the
Tanzania Agriculture Census (2010), 98% of farmers in the country are
smallholders who work on 2 hectares or less of crop land. According to a new
national survey, only 10% of Tanzanian smallholder households have a bank
account registered in their name. Nearly half of smallholder farmers report
they do not have or use accounts at full-service banking institutions because
the institutions did not offer them loans. Meanwhile, 75% of smallholders say
they have heard of mobile money and 97% of those understand the benefits of
mobile money. 32% of those who are aware of mobile money are saving money for a
long-term purpose and only 10% make business transactions with mobile money.
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