The multi-stakeholder expert group launched yesterday at the Bakadaji Hotel is designed to help identify obstacles and potential for agricultural value chain financing innovations in The Gambia, good practices and lessons to eradicate barriers for women, youth and marginalised groups.
Ms Evelin Ayadi-Krenzer, ECOWAS FRSD Programme Manager, thanked GIZ FRSD for the job well done in promoting financing for smallholder farmers, saying that financing is crucial in sustainable development.
“This Gambia project is a pilot programme,” she said. “From here we will continue to extend our projects to Guinea Bissau, Niger and other countries to get lessons learned and ideas on those countries. We know agriculture is the backbone of most of the countries and smallholder farmers are struggling with access to finance.”
She further stated that it’s a well-known issue and challenge and they are searching possibilities for finance, thus affirming that smallholder farmers are struggling with this critical barrier.
Abdoulie Jallow, team leader of ECOWAS FRSD Gambia pilot, thanked his team for the milestone in the implementation of the ECOWAS FRSD project in the Gambia.
He said the development of the agricultural sector in the country had been very much tampered with by the lack of access to finance, particularly for young people, women and vulnerable communities.
“The aim of the launching is to create conducive environment for financial inclusion and agricultural value chain finance,” he said. “This is a noble initiative for all actors and the launch of the agricultural chain taskforce or expert group will help in the development of the agricultural value chain.”
Ousman Touray, Senior Programme Officer for FAO, said that if the country wanted to be self-sufficient in food or for the economy to grow, agriculture would have to change and farmers would need to have access to finance.
He said they started the idea in 2018 when they gave a value chain assessment for nine agricultural commodities in the country.
“These include chicken, small ruminants, and mangoes, among others,” he said, adding:
‘This shows that the country could provide food items if there is support. We also did access to financial analysis of commercial and microfinance institutions in the country. The biggest surprise was, out of 25% of the entire commercial banks in the country, only 2-5% of their total investment is accessible to farmers.
“There is a big risk factor that the commercial banks think that if they give monies to the farmers, they will not be able to pay it back.”
At the edge of the event, there was a media roundtable on the poultry value chain where stakeholders dwelled on challenges and ways forward to better improve the sector.
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