Our Experience

The Smallholder Financial Inclusion (SFIN) Project

Project Description

ASI with funding from the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) through its Financial Inclusion for Smallholder Farmers in Africa Project (FISFAP) is implementing the two-year Smallholder Financial Inclusion (SFIN) project aimed at leveraging new mobile technology and a network of private partnerships to improve the saving and investment capacity of smallholder farmers in Northern Ghana. The project will reach a minimum of 10,000 smallholder farmers, training them on mobile money usage and financial literacy and connecting them with mobile savings and investment providers. The project aims to reach a cumulative payment volume of US$ 1 million through mobile money services from agribusinesses to smallholder farmers. By increasing the understanding and use of digital financial services, SFIN project will reduce the risks to both farmers and buyers associated with cash transactions and increase farmers' access to financial services which stand to greatly increase their financial welfare.

SFIN builds off previous projects, RIMFIN and AGFIN, that ASI completed in Ghana.

Project Approach

Based on ASI’s extensive experience working to expand access and use of mobile money technology throughout several regions in Southern Ghana, the SFIN Project will scale mobile money transfer (MMT) approach in the Brong Ahafo, Northern, Upper East, and Upper West Regions of Ghana and will target aggregators, out-grower businesses, and agribusiness firms within three primary value chains (rice, soya bean and maize). In these efforts, the project is partnering with national mobile money service providers Tigo Cash and Vodafone Cash to give participating farmers and firms access to their services. In addition, SFIN will be partnering with Capital Bank and Dalex Finance, two of the leading mobile investment service providers in Ghana, to give farmers access to additional investment and saving options through their mobile cash accounts.

Impact and Accomplishments

The project will achieve its goal through two interlinked components that together seek to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of the development and delivery of post-harvest financial services. The objectives of SFIN are to:

• 1. Improve rural and agricultural value chains actors’ access to mobile financial products and services that promotes financial inclusion for smallholder farmers. This objective will be realized by developing a robust database of all relevant stakeholders and establishing efficient electronic mobile wallets delivered through Tigo and Vodafone Cash’s digital payment platform directly to 10,000 smallholder farmers, improving financial literacy, and increasing opportunities among rural farmers through the adoption of mobile money.


• 2. Improve the linkages of formal financial institutions to sustainable agricultural supply chains: This objective will be developed by building a mobile money ecosystem that enables aggregators and nucleus farmers to use the mobile platform for investment savings and bank-to-wallet and wallet-to-bank transactions. This service will allow farmers to save money in an investment/bank account that provides principal security, investment returns and access to credit.

» Back to main Our Experience page.