While 55 percent of Africa’s population is engaged in agricultural livelihoods, only approximately 1 percent of bank lending across the continent goes to the agricultural sector. Farmers comprise the largest and poorest group at the bottom of the pyramid, so financial tools for farmers have very high impact potential. In an effort to address these challenges, the WE4F program was designed to scale innovations that impact the sectors of food-water, food–energy, and water-energy-food to increase the sustainability of agricultural food value chains and climate adaptation in developing countries and emerging markets – with a particular focus on the poor and women. One path for impacting smallholder farmers and increasing the scale of innovations is improving access to end-user financing and helping innovators develop new models. 

To share current lessons learned and explore multiple points of view on end-user financing, WE4F is co-hosting a policy dialogue with AMCOW. The session, entitled “Policy dialogue: Access to end-user financing to drive groundbreaking water-energy-food (WEF) nexus innovation scaling in Africa for climate adaptation” brings together the four African Regional Innovation Hubs (East, West, MENA, and Southern and Central). By using a policy and investment lens, this session shares the opportunities and challenges for scaling WEF nexus solutions in Africa in a multi-partner, multi-innovator model. 

Together, hub staff, WE4F innovators, and donor representatives will explore questions like: Why is end-user financing crucial to businesses? What are the key policy/advocacy challenges to scaling end-user financing? How can it play a role in climate adaptation? 

Join WE4F on March 24th at 14:00 GMT to learn more: https://www.worldwaterforum.org/en/registration