Addressing Agriculture Market Dysfunctions through Blended Finance with a Gender Lens

The paper uses the learnings of the initiative’s work in this area to build the case for using a ‘Capital Plus’ model of blended finance to spur growth in agribusinesses that improve competitiveness and resilience of the sector in developing countries.

It covers several practical examples of how development practitioners can structure blended finance models, in partnership with investors, to address supply-side constraints of capital, while also providing technical assistance for specific outcomes.

Highlighting business models across the agriculture value-chain, the paper establishes how intentional gender lens mandates in development programming can fuel the potential of women as leaders of innovative agribusinesses.

The paper highlights that while common approaches to address the underlying causes of agriculture market dysfunctions typically focus on creating women’s economic outcomes in rural communities, impact investing approaches with an intentional gender lens tend to create strong women’s economic outcomes at the business ownership and leadership level.

It concludes with key lessons on how to complement the agriculture development approaches with blended finance interventions using a gender lens to achieve holistic women’s economic empowerment outcomes at the sector level.

Contents

• Purpose: Building the Case for ‘Capital Plus’ Approach
• Context: The Role of Entrepreneurship and Access to Finance
• Approach: Blended Finance to Unlock Private Sector Capital
  • Trade Financing for Agricultural Exporters
  • Debt Financing for Moderate Growth Businesses
  • Customised Debt and Equity Financing Products with Forward-Backward Facility
  • Women’s SME Acceleration Program for Agriculture and Food Security
• Outcomes Achieved: Dynamic Agriculture Business Models Improving Sector’s Efficiencies
  • Improving Productivity and Agri-Inputs Models
  • Increasing Post-Harvest Value
  • Tech-Enabled Farm-to-Table Models
• Key Lessons and Future Opportunities