Farming can be one of the riskiest jobs in the world for families living in developing communities. Severe weather, crop diseases, or bad seed can destroy an entire season’s harvest – and when your livelihood depends on just one or two harvests a year, it can mean your children go hungry for months, and drop out of school until you can afford to send them back. Nearly 8 in 10 of the world’s poorest families rely on agriculture to survive, and struggle to break the cycle of low-productivity farming that keeps them in poverty, season after season.
Opportunity International’s AgFinance services help equip farmers with the capital, knowledge, and skills they need to transform their subsistence farms into productive, job-creating, community-changing businesses. To date, Opportunity has helped empower nearly half a million farmers in sub-Saharan Africa build resilient livelihoods through small-scale farming.
Today, this work is more important than ever. As the global community makes progress toward ending extreme poverty, farmers, more and more, are left behind. Your support helps bring targeted financial services, training, and support to agricultural communities throughout sub-Saharan Africa, empowering farmers to sustainably improve their farms, increase their yields and incomes, and break the cycle of poverty.
The AgFinance Model
For 47 years, Opportunity International has worked to lift families out of poverty by pioneering innovative financial solutions that help families build sustainable livelihoods for themselves and their communities. AgFinance specifically targets the unique needs of farmers by:
By unlocking these services, your support helps provide a farming family with high-quality seed to plant, the skills to cultivate healthy crops, and connections to sell their harvest at a fair rate in their local markets –interventions that helps them continue improving and sustaining good harvests, year after year.
Finance
Financial institutions currently meet only 3% of the total estimated demand for loans from small farmers, which is why Opportunity works to expand access to agricultural financial services in rural communities. Additionally, by leveraging technology, Opportunity is breaking down geographic barriers to make lending more convenient and more accessible for rural farmers. Opportunity’s agriculture financial services include:
Training
When financial services are supplemented with training, farmers can invest in much-needed resources while also deepening skills to transform their farms into thriving enterprises. Through Opportunity, farmers are receiving training on topics such as:
Support
Farmers rely on a network of support services throughout their value chains to effectively grow, cultivate, and sell their crops. Broken links within value chains – for example, if farmers couldn’t find the right seed to plant, or an off-taker to purchase their crops before they spoiled – are key drivers that prevent farmers from earning their full potential. Opportunity helps build strong agricultural support networks by:
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