NextBillion - An Initiative of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

Thursday, August 25, 2016

At least two million smallholder farmers in Kenya and Rwanda are set to benefit from a $30 million partnership to promote financial inclusion between the Kenya Commercial Bank (KCB) Group and The MasterCard Foundation.

“We are reimagining and redefining the agricultural sector with a view of transforming agribusiness by accelerating financial services access,” said KCB Group CEO and Managing Director Kenya Joshua Oigara.

The partnership targets smallholder farmers and pastoralists in the agricultural sector which is largely unbanked in Kenya and Rwanda.

According to Oigara, only three per cent of loans in the banking sector are channelled into agribusiness in Kenya despite the agriculture sector contributing 30 per cent to the country’s GDP and employing more than 60 per cent of the population.