Blog Scaling digital financial services for smallholder farmers in Kenya: A stakeholder consultation on challenges, opportunities, and action pathways
Access to affordable finance remains one of the biggest barriers to agricultural transformation in Africa. Despite producing around 80% of the continent's food, smallholder farmers continue to face limited access to credit and insurance due to climate-related risks and a lack of suitable financial products.
To address this challenge, the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), the Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT (Alliance), and partners convened key stakeholders in Nairobi to develop a scaling strategy for ACRE Africa's Tool for Agricultural Risk Assessment (TARA) an AI-powered platform that combines climate, satellite, and farm-level data to support smarter lending, insurance, and advisory services.
Using the CGIAR Innovation Packages and Scaling Readiness (IPSR) approach, participants identified the key barriers to scaling TARA and agreed on practical actions to expand access to TARA-enabled loans bundled with high-quality insurance. The workshop set an ambitious target of reaching 50,000 smallholder farmers in Kenya by 2028, with a strong focus on women, youth, and marginalized groups.The consultation produced a shared roadmap for strengthening partnerships, improving policy and regulatory support, increasing farmer awareness, and advancing inclusive digital financial services that build resilience in the face of climate change.
