Blended finance offers viable opportunities
Transformation in the agriculture sector is lagging behind, by all accounts, despite numerous projects and efforts from both private and government institutions to establish new farmers. As financing poses the biggest challenge for many farmers, this is an area that requires the most intervention.
Pieter van Welzen, senior consultant on financial markets in Africa at law firm CMS RM Partners, who is providing legal counsel for Rabobank’s foray into Southern Africa through its dedicated smallholder farmer fund, says that commercial banks view smallholder farmers as too risky to lend to.
“This leaves [these] farmers with limited options to secure funding for expansion, and hampers how fast South Africa’s farmers, most of whom are not large commercial operations, can scale up to access
