To apply, please submit a proposal to michelle@kiva.org, including evidence of experience in similar assignments. The subject of the email submission should be “RFP climate-smart financing consultancy.”
The financing gap for smallholder farmers is estimated at US$170 billion (2022). In response, Kiva is committed to driving positive social, economic, and environmental change by strengthening the resilience and empowerment of smallholder farmers and agri-MSMEs, while advancing climate-smart agricultural development. With a strong track record of agricultural investments, Kiva has reached more than 1.45 million borrowers—over 75% of them women—with agricultural loans totaling over US$635 million. Notably, one in four loans financed by Kiva supports borrowers in the agriculture sector, with a particular emphasis on women farmers, who represent 75% of Kiva’s agricultural lending. This reflects Kiva’s recognition of the central role women play in agriculture and rural development.
To further address the financing gap, Kiva is implementing projects aimed at scaling agricultural innovations that strengthen resilience and empower smallholder farmers through collaborative capital. These projects will promote sustainable livelihoods by expanding access to financial services that support the adoption and scaling of sustainable agricultural innovations, including improved technologies, enhanced farming techniques, and climate-smart practices. Projects will be in Kenya, Madagascar, and Uganda.
Project objective
The project aims to expand financial inclusion and resilience by leveraging risk-tolerant, crowdfunded capital for innovative climate adaptation. This will be achieved by reducing credit risks, expanding access to finance, strengthening institutional and community capacities, and equipping stakeholders with climate-relevant tools and knowledge.
The approach is structured around four components:
- Strengthening lending partners’ resilience and capacity to provide climate-smart financing
- Building borrower-level resilience to climate change
- Scaling adaptation finance through Kiva’s catalytic capital to transform MFI loan portfolios
- Enhancing knowledge management and communications.
Delivery will be anchored on three pillars:
- Pillar 1: Scaling Access to Finance for Agricultural Innovations – Expanding affordable credit for smallholder farmers to invest in improved technologies, increase productivity, and strengthen climate resilience, while fostering inclusive growth, employment, and sustainable practices.
- Pillar 2: Climate-Smart Technical Assistance – Providing tailored advisory and technical support to financial service providers and social enterprises to co-create climate-smart products, reduce GHG emissions, and enhance financial and livelihood resilience at the farmer, institutional, and community levels.
- Pillar 3: Share knowledge and foster increased global cooperation. This pillar aims to synthesize and share learnings from the project to empower a broad set of FSPs to scale financial services for smallholders in support of agricultural innovation. This will involve sharing the Climate-Smart Lending Toolkit and hosting virtual convenings to facilitate peer-to-peer learning on designing and scaling financial services tailored to smallholder farmers in support of agricultural innovation.
Overview of target groups
Smallholder farmers face persistent challenges such as limited access to finance, inadequate knowledge, poor infrastructure, and restricted markets, all of which reduce productivity and deepen poverty. Women farmers are particularly disadvantaged due to barriers in accessing finance, inputs, and land rights. The project will focus on two target groups:
Direct target group:
Financial service providers and Kiva lending partners offering products and services to smallholder farmers, cooperatives, MSMEs, and other actors promoting sustainable agricultural innovations.
Indirect target group:
Smallholder farmers, with an emphasis on vulnerable and underserved communities.
Key expected outcomes:
- Strengthened the resilience of financial institutions
- Increased access to climate-adaptive financial services
- Improved borrower capacity for risk management, and
- A scaling up of adaptation-focused lending.
Ultimately, the project will encourage the sharing of findings and knowledge with the wider MFI network with an aim to support a wider shift within the micro-finance sector.
The Assignment
Kiva is seeking a consultancy firm to work closely with Kiva and selected Lending Partners (FSPs), to lead the development of climate-smart financial products and services based on borrower experiences and needs.
Activities may include:
- Working with FSPs’ clients to better understand the climate changes they are experiencing, impacts to livelihoods, and coping mechanisms.
- Co-developing adaptation strategies with local communities that increase their resilience to climate change.
- Supporting FSPs in enhancing their institutional capacity to better support their clients in building their climate resilience.
- Developing a comprehensive learning and recommendation strategy to ensure that learnings and best practices for FSPs are effectively integrated into the crop insurance and farmers’ resource center.
- Generating new knowledge products to support FSPs in building climate-resilient portfolios, including case studies, webinars, and a toolkit.
(Note: All reports, analyses, metrics, and strategic documents developed under this assignment will be the sole property of Kiva.)
Qualifications
The consultancy firm should have a minimum of 10 years of relevant experience working with financial service providers (FSPs) in the agriculture sector. Demonstrated expertise in formulating strategic plans is essential. The firm will be expected to liaise with the Grant and Impact Manager and the Impact Subcommittee to prepare and develop technical assistance initiatives.
