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UOB Takes a Human-Centered Approach to Rwanda’s Smallholders

Nick Meakin of Urwego Opportunity Bank (UOB) discusses how Rwanda's first and largest microfinance bank is using a human-centered approach to designing financial products that better meet the needs of smallholder farmers.

Can HCD Lead to Digital Financial Solutions for Smallholders?

Designing appropriate and affordable financial solutions for smallholder households can be difficult. In collaboration with IDEO.org and Dalberg’s Design Impact Group, CGAP will draw on its experience to apply human-centered design (HCD) to smallholder product design.

Talking Avocados, Spinach & Catfish with a Tanzanian Rice Farmer

Although Gideon, a participant in CGAP's financial diaries of smallholder families research, is technically a rice farmer, much of his income is comprised of income from other crops and and non-agricultural activities.

Don’t Abandon Youth Financial Services - Innovate

Providing services for small savers is a challenge for financial institutions. With this in mind, Freedom from Hunger is getting a better understanding of the business case behind financial services to youth, who many financial institutions choose not to serve.

Adaptations of the Graduation Approach: Risks and Opportunities

Coaching has proven to be a critical component of the Graduation Approach, but it is also complex to implement. Staffing constraints often cause this building block to be trimmed, sometimes at the expense of program results.

Filling the Smallholder Household Data Gap: A New Learning Agenda

There is a significant data gap when it comes to smallholders' demand for financial services. Filling this gap is going to require new efforts and a shared learning agenda.

Understanding our Smallholder Clients, Serving them Better

Smallholder farmers are among the most financially excluded of all client segments. Understanding their particular needs is an important step in helping financial service providers to develop appropriate and effective products that serve them effectively.

Learning from Smallholder Supply Chains in Côte d’Ivoire

IFC and Ecom, a global commodity trading company, interviewed more than 2,000 cocoa farmers in Côte d’Ivoire about their income levels, food security, and other qualitative aspects of their farming lives. The results highlight some key challenges facing smallholder farmers.

Filling Data Gaps in Smallholder Finance

There is very little available data on the characteristics of smallholder farmers' financial needs. The MIX, through its FINclusion Lab, is filling this gap by gathering data on smallholder finance and providing a framework for others interested in data collection.

The Global Distribution of Smallholder and Family Farms

The terms "smallholder farm" and "family farm" are often used interchangeably, but technically refer to different dimensions of agriculture. Getting better clarity on the basic composition of the world's farms is challenging, but critical.

CGAP’s National Surveys of Smallholder Households

CGAP is undertaking national surveys of smallholders in Mozambique and Tanzania to identify distinct segments of households and determine their demand for financial services.

Policymakers Weigh In on the Graduation Approach

Through a series of video interviews with CGAP, policymakers and academics from all over the world weigh in on how the graduation approach can help the extreme poor find a pathway to a sustainable livelihood.

YouthStart: Training Banks to Serve Young Customers

Youth have become a core concern in many African economies, yet most financial institutions are not equipped to address them as real potential customers.

Analyzing the Business Case for Youth Savings

Serving young clients can be difficult for banks driven by short-term profit goals. But capturing the youth market can help give financial service providers a competitive edge in the long-run.

Enabling Data-Driven Financing for Smallholder Farmers

Mobilizing technology, such as smartphones, tablets, and the Internet, holds a tremendous opportunity to provide financial services for smallholders and to empower them to use data that is critical to their businesses in better ways.

Can Mobile Money Extend Financial Services To Smallholder Farmers

On paper, digital financial services can sound like a silver bullet to reach millions of rural, underserved smallholder farmers. In reality, the challenges can be greater than the deployment of a low-tech solution.

Bringing Mobile Wallets to Nigerian Farmers

Cellulant developed a mobile wallet network in Nigeria that extends to some eight million farmers. With more than 40 million transactions in just two years, smallholder farmers in Nigeria are poised to adopt digital financial services more broadly.

Smallholder Finance: Digital Solutions to Traditional Challenges?

A new CGAP focus note takes a look at the ways digital financial services can help overcome the traditional "pain points" - including higher cost and risk - of serving smallholder farmers with formal financial services.

Applied Product Innovation for Smallholder Finance

CGAP is seeking partners to engage in a human-centered design process to develop products specifically tailored to the needs and objectives of smallholder farmers and their families.

Preparing to Spend a Year with Smallholder Farmers in Tanzania

The preparations for the smallholder farmer household financial diaries continue in Tanzania, Pakistan and Mozambique. Here we discuss the site selection process in Tanzania, which we completed in advance of the sampling and recruiting of households.