The event will take place from the 3 to 7 of July in Cotonou.

The FAO African Roots and Tubers project supports the commercialization of root and tuber crops by linking small actors to domestic and regional buyers in Côte d’ Ivoire, Ghana, Cameroon, Benin, Rwanda, Uganda and Malawi, with the overall objective of improving the livelihoods of small producers engaged in these value chains. The areas of intervention of the ART project relate to trade and business management, production intensification, and access to financial and risk management services. 

In Benin, the project  focuses on the cassava and yam value chains. More specifically, producers and processors of cassava and yam have been receiving support in the development of inclusive business models, through several capacity building initiatives. One very critical area that requests an intervention at project level is the lack of access to financial services for both producers and processors, to invest on their activities and take advantage of the growing markets.

A market assessment carried out under the project, showed that existing financial services providers (banks, credit unions and MFIs) did not reach this segment of the market due to unaffordable high interest rates and lack of guarantees of the potential clients.

Most financial institution have traditionally seen agricultural finance – especially for smallholder farmers – as excessively risky and too difficult to provide in a profitable manner.  This perception has been fueled by weak enabling environments and a lack of familiarity with both rural market and client conditions and with commercially-successful approaches to addressing agricultural finance needs.  

Fortunately, the combination of more favorable market conditions, increasing investor demand and supportive public sector policies and programs is driving the interest of banks and other financial institutions to explore new ways to provide sustainable, commercially-viable financial services to this growing market segment.

The ability to assess agricultural markets is the first and most important step in providing agricultural finance products. It enables financial institutions and policy makers to estimate demand for specific agricultural finance products, estimate return and cost structures in different operational scenarios and identify risk management and delivery strategies for commercially viable products for rural households and producers.

Given this background, on 6^th  July 2017, the FAO African Roots and Tubers Project is organizing  a two-days-training on Financial Market Assessments for the Agricultural Sector to facilitate the provision of financial services to the cassava and yam value chains.

Technical contact: Project Coordinator/FAO Regional Office for Africa, Accra, [email protected]