Zipping Farmers and Finance

[Wim Goris]

Maybe you have heard about this rural finance meeting in Kampala, organised by the Bank of Uganda and the Partnership for Making Finance Work for Africa.The Zipping conference recognised that Agricultural Finance needs special attention, as the financial services needs of Agriculture Sectors in Africa are pressing.

 

Please find information on the conference here and below:

• Link to Zipping farmers and finance conference site
• Zipping Farmers and Finance Conference Paper (65 pages, draft)
• Kampala Principles on Agri-Finance (1 page)

 

I'd like to receive comments on the Kampala Principles onepager. My question to all is what you think of them. Do they apply to your situation too ? What would you add, skip or stress in these principles ?

 

I highly appreciate your comments and discussion here as input for a small dutch debriefing event on Zipping farmers and finance next 30 August in Utrecht.

 

Wim Goris

Agri-ProFocus

[Christian Chileshe]

Hi Wim,

Indeed I did come across the Kampala Principles mainly because of current research work I am undertaking in "Financing Entrepreneurship" and also because I am facilitating a couple of National processes linked to CAADP.

I appreciate that these are policy principles that seek to create a framework within which specific actions are supposed to be undertaken. In this sense they will invariably be broad and overarching.

But even in these instances, unless they are developed around specific known or agreed upon issues, there is liklihood of ending up with, amongst other things, the following:

1. Politically correct expressions that do not necessarily pin down the critical issues that need to be influenced.
2. They remain open to multiple interpretations that make it difficult to develop sufficient common ground for the often needed collective action (especially if we are dealing with value chains!)

Question is, "Do we generally understand at least some of the critical factors that have continued to retard agricultural financing and resultant development that works for all?" My worry has been that we may not. If we do, then we may not be deliberately profiling these critical factors, even when opportunities such as the Kampala conference present themselves.

There is a lot that needs to be done about agricultural development in Africa. But, amongst other things, we need to use history and experience to help us identify the "packing order" with regard to issues needing attention. We can't simply start from anywhere and work our way to the desired results.

Though I can site a few of what should have by now emerged as critical factors, I will restrict myself to one that I can confidently write about - Levels of Entrepreneurship in many African societies (rural or urban, including the leadership).

There is significant evidence of this being a major inhibitor and many of the stakeholders to the Kampala Principles are likely to acknowledge this factor in informal discussion.

But to what extent has this aspect been captured in any of the principles?

The aspect of entrepreneurship development is often not targeted. Instead, efforts go towards the symptoms of low levels of entrepreneurship. And so one will see that principle number 8 to 11 do just that. This can be clearly seen when one reads the conference paper you attached to your message and sees how the issues referred to in these principles are interpreted. Not in the direction of recognising entrepreneurship and the need to deal with it.

I am not suggesting that the principles are not an important step. They are. Just that we need to think about taking the initiative to the next level. For instance, my concerns around entrepreneurship development can actually be fused/mainstreamed into the principles 8 to 11.

So,do we really want to zip farmers and finance? I put forward my argument that entrepreneurship is foundational to making the two hold together . . .

I will stop here

Christian

 

 

[Wim Goris]

Dear Christian

Thank you for your contribution, you emphasize (lack of) entrepreneurship as a major inhibitor. And specifically addressing entrepreneurship should be part of the Kampala Principles (eg 8-11). I like to have others comment on this statement.

And Christian I like to ask you about the relation between farmer entrepreneurship and principle 2 on strengthening farmer organisations. Is there a link here too?

Wim Goris

 

 

[Christian Chileshe]

I will restrict my comment to your question on principle 2, to allow other views to be expressed.

Entrepreneurship can actually be mainstreamed into all the principles and its visibility will vary from one principle to the next. It should, after all, never hijack any particular principle all together, but merely support it.

So, yes you are right, principle 2 could certainly benefit from mainstreaming entrepreneurship probably to a greater extent than some of the others. 

We had a lengthy discussion some months back with colleagues who are part of this ning. And in that chat, my arguement was that institutional and value chain development tends to focus on what I would call the "hardware" side of capacity development. So we introduce concepts, techniques, skills, etc and neglect the "software" that would deal with mind-set. Farmer groups/institutions are trained, then trained again. Then they are trained. And trained yet again (You can replace "training" with the various terms in capacity development/strengthening). We may slightly change the content now and then, but we don't seem to want to closely scrutinize the methodology.

It is actually harder to develop institutional strengthening interventions that focus or strongly incorporate mind-set. So the often easier way around this is to deal with the other more "tangible" aspects, even if they may not be the main impediments to change.

So the question I would throw out is: What is meant by "strengthening" farmer organisations, in the context of number 2 of the Kampala Principles?

 

[Wim Goris]

 

Meanwhile the Zipping Farmers and Finance conference website released reports and video

Find it here

[Wim Goris]

Dear all,

Thank you all for the contributions to the discussion on this ning. Time to share follow-up:

• I mentioned the Dutch debriefing event (30 August). Here are the minutes. These minutes and comments on Kampala Principles were also shared with MFW4A- the organizers of the Zipping farmers and finance event.
• The MFW4A follow-up included an event in Addis Ababa Ethiopia: Making Finance Work For Africa 2011 Partnership For Africa, held 15 and 16 september. Participant Christine Ngugi is kindly sharing her notes of the Addis event (attached).
• Read more about the preparations for a MFW4A AgFin working group that will work on finance policy recommendations; support/link to CAADP plans; and finance knowledge management.

Have you been at the Addis conference? Any questions to participants? Feel free to share your views too !

Kind regards,

Wim Goris