“On the money”: Innovating finance to enable farmer-led irrigation
23 August, 17:00 – 18:20 CET Virtual Session ID 10336
Convenors: ILSSI/Borlaug, World Bank, IFPRI, IWMI
Overview
Irrigation can strengthen resilience, improve nutrition and increase incomes, but low access to technologies has limited growth. Access to credit was once assumed the critical fix to unleash farmer investment in small-scale irrigation technologies. However, scaling farmer-led irrigation requires changes in a complex finance ecosystem that includes farmers, finance providers, value chain actors and equipment suppliers. Recent evidence highlights the need to address finance at multiple points along the scaling pathway to sustainable, farmer led irrigation.
Key messages
- Recent and on-going public and private investments offer lessons for finance for farmer-led irrigation throughout the finance ecosystem
- Finance instruments at multiple points can affect both supply (irrigation equipment suppliers) and demand (farmers/producers, irrigated value chain actors)
- Innovative finance products are emerging through both public and private mechanisms
Program:
0.00-0.05: Introductory remarks [Nicole Lefore]
0.06-0.45: Speed talks
- Constraints on farmer demand for credit and the supply of credit at the farm household level (IFPRI, Bedru Balana)
[public/donor experiences and lessons]
- Innovative and Affordable Financing for Farmer-Led Irrigation Development: Case studies from Nigeria and Uganda (World Bank, Svetlana Valieva)
- Role of public agencies and subsidy programs: A case study from Rwanda (DWFI, University of Nebraska, Natacha Akilaza)
[private sector perspectives and lessons]
[equity and acceleration]
- Financing Irrigation for Women & Smallholders: Lessons from Women’s World Banking’s financial inclusion research (Women’s World Banking, Megan Dwyer Baumann)
0.46-1.05: Moderated participant and speaker discussion: Synthesizing lessons
This part of the session will encourage participant contributions and crowd-source questions. The aim of the discussion will be to extract lessons from across cases on innovation in finance for multiple actors – from farmer to company to equipment suppliers and irrigated value chain companies.
- What are emerging opportunities in the irrigation finance ecosystem for different actors and levels?
- What are the frictions and the complementarities of public sector finance approaches, such as subsidies, and private sector interests?
- How can interventions address equity while also trying to accelerate scaling?
1.06-1.15: Audience interaction (Q & A and/or audience poll)
- How does finance rank in accelerating access to irrigation compared to other constraints?
- How important do you rank equity in access to finance?
- What do we need to know more about to design equitable and sustainable finance for irrigation (emerging issues for future research)?
1.16-1.20: Wrap up of key messages and looking forward
Zachary Stewart, USAID
Speakers:
Bedru Balana
International Food Policy Research Institute
Bedru Balana is a Research Fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), working on Nigeria Agricultural Policy Project as part of the FtF USAID-Nigeria Strategy Support Programme (NSSP).
Svetlana Valieva
The World Bank
Svetlana Valieva serves as the Coordinator for the Water in Agriculture Global Solutions Group (WiA GSG) of the Water Global Practice at the World Bank.
Natacha Akilaza
DWFI, University of Nebraska
Natacha Akaliza joined the Water for Food Global Institute in July 2020 as a program consultant. Her efforts center around developing and implementing research and capacity-building programs to help advance smallholder irrigation in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Minh Thai
International Water Management Institute
Thai Thi Minh is a Senior Researcher at the International Water Management Institute (IWMI), Ghana where she leads innovation scaling research, multi-stakeholder dialogue, and partnership with private and public sector entities.
Megan Baumann
Women’s World Banking
Megan is the Global Lead for Qualitative Research and the Regional Research Lead for Latin America.
Zachary Stewart
USAID
Dr. Zachary Stewart is the Production Systems Specialist and a US Diplomat with USAID within the Bureau for Resilience and Food Security and has nearly 15 years of experience in international agricultural research and development.
