Help Women in Rwanda Fight Against Poverty

Approximately 70% of Africans work in agriculture and these households are some of the poorest in the world. Opportunity found that farmers in Africa are producing at only 40% of their potential because they cannot access the needed best-practice information, financing and markets. With your help we work with small-scale farmers in Rwanda to adopt more productive agriculture practices, link up with buyers and extension service providers, and access inputs to grow more food.

Opportunity spent 2010 and 2011 working with small-scale farmers and learning from them which financial tools and services they need to succeed. In 2012, Opportunity’s Agriculture Finance team aims to bring services closer to clients using mobile phone banking. This gives clients access to their funds from their own rural village, and uses GPS to capture household data and map out farm plots that show how to get the best return from their land.   

The Agriculture Finance program has grown tremendously from its start nearly five years ago.

• Crops funded in Rwanda now include:  potato, rice, maize, cassava.
• Savings are very important for farming families who must make their harvest income last all year. At year-end, 461,444 rural families across Africa had an Opportunity savings account, up 34% from 2010.

Links:

• www.opportunity.org