The literature suggests a wide range of impacts of improved transport connectivity on agricultural growth. Still, the infrastructure-growth nexus remains somewhat mysterious, particularly in the African context, because many rural farmers do not have their own transport means. Using data from...

Many African countries rely on sporadic land transfers from customary to statutory domains to attract investment and improve agricultural performance. Data from 15,000 smallholders and 800 estates in Malawi allow exploring the long-term effects of such a strategy. The results suggest that (i)...

Improving the livelihoods of poor households and transitioning more women back to the labor force is a major challenge in South Asia. Self-employment promoted through women's groups has often been cited as a promising intervention towards this end. However, the evidence on the impact of such...

Financial market imperfections remain pervasive in developing countries, constraining potentially profitable investment decisions, especially for rural smallholder farmers. Warrantage is an innovative model of rural finance with the potential to overcome credit, storage, and commitment...

Improving rural credit markets requires a good understanding of the root causes of market failures and taking necessary steps to address them. This paper investigates the role of productivity shocks in borrowers' repayment choices. Using a framed field experiment that simulated a repeated...

The performance of the Malian economy is largely dependent on the performance of the agricultural sector. The overall good growth in the Malian economy over the last several years is attributed to the agricultural GDP growth. Since 1995, the economy grew at about 5 percent per year until 2010,...

Current levels of investment in agricultural value chains are insufficient to achieve key development goals including ending poverty and hunger, boosting shared prosperity through more and better jobs, and better stewarding the world's natural resources by 2030. Crowding-in private investment to...

Agriculture is critical to Rwanda's economy and a key sector in Rwanda's Economic Development and Poverty Reduction Strategy (EDPRS). Agriculture finance is a national priority to achieve transformation of the agriculture sector and greater financial inclusion. Prioritizing agriculture finance...

The study, conducted assesses the current state of agricultural finance in the Republic of Kosovo (Kosovo) and determine ways to improve the provision of finance to Kosovo's growing agricultural economy. The study is aimed at informing the full range of stakeholders about the best options to...

This paper reviews possibilities for, and experience with, credit-linked crop insurance, including different types of insurance and credit arrangements, ranging from insurance sold to individual farmers to meso insurance sold to financial service providers (FSPs) to cover losses suffered by...