CARI to improve bankers’ capacity to support farmers

The Competitive African Rice Initiative (CARI) has started training agricultural desk officers in the bank sector to boost their capacity to support rice farmers with loans with low interest rates.

Dr Andrew Efisue, the Country Operations Manager of CARI, made this known in an interview with News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Abuja on Wednesday.

He said that the training on Agricultural Value Chain Finance (VCF) in Nigeria was organised in Abuja by CARI for financial institutions.

“The VCF tool was developed three years ago with the specific purpose of training bankers on agricultural financing because we realised that in many cases, bankers do not understand farmers and farming.

“The tool was developed to increase the capacity of bankers so that they can feel more comfortable in creating the right framework to support farmers through lending to them.

“The objective is to convince these bankers and after the training, they will be more favourably disposed towards lending to farmers, contrary to what has been the case in the past.

“We have encouraging reports from our previous training and we always want the participants to be able to go back to their perspective banks and convince their management that there is need to support farmers,’’ he said.

Efisue said that CARI would look at the different interest rates and what was prevailing in the market, with a view to discussing the pros and cons of several approaches before choosing the preferable and sustainable one for farmers.

Mr Ekundayo Mejebi, Consultant to CARI, said that the training would improve the knowledge of the participants on value chain financing, services and business models for sustainable and commercially viable agricultural ventures.

“The participants will be able to understand value chains as economic, technical and institutional systems with a broad range of actors, their relations and the role of agricultural enterprises in this context.

“They will also understand the management principles of agriculture as a business with a focus on primary producers, their characteristics and objectives.

“The training will also help them understand the CARI interventions and results regarding the performance of smallholders and management finance partners.

“It will also help the participants to know the challenges and success factors for developing and supplying financial services to smallholder farmers as well as small and medium enterprises within the scope of CARI,’’ he said.

Also speaking, Mr Adeniyi Kazeem, Value Chain Advisor to CARI, said that CARI had achieved a lot in efforts to improve the productivity of farmers and quality of rice production in Nigeria.

“Our workshop for financial institutions has also improved the access of all value chain actors to financial services

“We have increased efficiency of local rice farmers; we have improved rice processing and marketing via structured value chain linkages, improved technology and processing management.

“We have provided an enabling environment at national and regional levels, including policy framework and strengthening of rice sector initiatives,’’ he said.

Meanwhile, CARI had held a breakfast meeting for financiers working in the agricultural sector to provide funding for smallholder rice farmers.

Dr Stefan Kachelriess-Matthess, CARI’s Programme Director, said in Abuja that the meeting presented an avenue to discuss ways of promoting CARI perspectives and objectives on access to finance.

“Our mandate at CARI is to facilitate access to finance for our smallholder farmers and that is what informed today’s gathering.

“We have been doing this but we decided to take it more strongly now so as to see how actors across the rice value chain could have a better way to finance or promote access to finance.

“This is the first meeting we are having this year and it is like a trial meeting.

“We want to hold this breakfast meeting quarterly, so as to enable stakeholders to gather, discuss and update themselves on how to access to finance.

“This will, however, go a long way to address some of the challenges facing farmers in terms of access to finance so as to boost their production and livelihoods,” he said.

Kachelriess-Matthess said that CARI was a regional programme involving Nigeria, Ghana, Burkina Faso and Tanzania, and executed under the aegis German Development Cooperation (GIZ).

“CARI is launched by the Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development of Germany and supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

“CARI seeks to significantly improve the livelihoods of smallholder rice farmers in Nigeria, Ghana, Burkina Faso and Tanzania by increasing the competitiveness of domestic rice production and processing to meet the increasing demand.

“The principal aim is to address coordination failures; create better linkages among rice value chain actors and as a result, increase the expected economic returns of all stakeholders.

“The programme started in October 2013 and runs until June 2018, with a perspective for a following phase until June 2021,” he added.

Speaking, Mr Farouk Kurawa, Assistant General Manager, Agricultural Value Chain Development and Services (NIRSAL), said that several programmes were currently executed for smallholder farmers through his office.

He, however, advised farmers, especially smallholders, to make use of this window so as to expand their production and boost the nation’s revenue.

Also speaking, Dr Mudashir Olaitan, Director, Development Finance Department, Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), said that the bank had initiated many initiatives which cut across the value chain.

“We are looking at smallholder farmers as well as the medium and large scale farmers. But we are focusing more attention on smallholder farmers because they form 70 per cent of the total farmer population in the country.

“I am sure that you can testify that the Federal Government has done so well in the Anchor Borrowers’ Programme, which was particularly targeted at rice farmers; the scheme has significantly increased rice production in the country,’’ he said.