Pan-African Savings and Loans to support smallholder farmers
Pan-African Savings and Loans Limited, in partnership with AgroCenta, under their Financial Inclusion for Small Holder Farmers in Africa Project (FISFAP) and Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), will provide credit facilities to smallholder farmers in the Afram Plains South of the Eastern Region.
The aim of the partnership is to provide loans and financial advisory services to all smallholder farmers in order to expand their farming businesses.
The Managing Director of Pan-African, Ms Emelia Desiree Atta-Fynn, said as part of her outfit’s strategies to promote financial inclusion and improve livelihoods of its customers, it embraces collaborative opportunities to offer financial services to the economically active in society.
She said the quest to explore innovative means of doing business and meet the needs of their target group led them to partner with AgroCenta, a company that connected the smallholder farmers in the staple food (rice, maize, millet and soybean) value chain to a wider online market to trade, access truck delivery services and get real-time market information, all from their mobile phones through the use of SMS and voice services.
“This partnership is strongly supported by AGRA, a farmer-centred, African-led and partnership-driven institution that is transforming Africa’s smallholder farming to businesses, and at the same time advocating an enabling policy environment,” she explained.
The Programme Officer of AGRA, Ms Amanda Anipu, said AGRA aimed at partnering smallholder farmers to expand their businesses.
“AGRA embarked on this initiative to support everyone in the food supply chain because it envisions using online sales of farm produce in the future,” she said.
The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of AgroCenta, Mr Francis Obirikorang, said the programme was expected to give out loans to over 300 farmers, including crop insurance and pensions to make life easier when they could not farm anymore.
Pan-African over the years has leveraged on technology to achieve its corporate goals of making the financial sector relevant to the low-income earners and businesses. With the introduction of Quick, a mobile financial product, customers can now have access to their bank accounts with the company from any location at any time.