The challenge is to help create the necessary conditions to improve the financial autonomy of the rural world and consolidate endogenous financial intermediation initiatives.
Some elements related to the context of financing rural Africa
The possibilities of access to finance in rural Africa south of the Sahara are very limited. Almost all agricultural banks went bankrupt. The decentralized financing systems that succeeded these banks are mainly settled in urban areas and have important limitations that do not allow them to serve the peasant masses in remote areas with consequences that they do not know finance their projects.
Also, despite the existence of a significant capacity savings mobilization in the villages and local mobilization dynamics through tontines and other forms of savings instruments / credit, farmers still have their eyes turned outward to the financing of individual and collective projects. This has a negative impact on rural development.
Justification of our action: why intervene in this area?
We believe that access to financing by farmers emerged as the prerequisite to lead a sustainable endogenous development because good ideas, good projects can not be implemented without a minimum level of funding.
We believe that relying on the existing dynamics in villages, creating a financial instrument at Community base is likely to strengthen the mobilization of local savings dynamics that can help provide credit to individuals and entities farmers to finance their projects.
intervention strategies: our models
Inades Formation intervenes in the rural finance sector to support the establishment, consolidation and sustainability of farmers’ financial intermediation structures in rural Africa. To date, two instruments are being tested: the Solidarity Fund for Development (Fonsdev) and Savings and Credit Groups (GEC). These structures have the mission to encourage the mobilization of local savings by popular education, providing financial services (savings and credit) suitable and accessible to rural populations, contribute to community development, promote the transfer of financial resources from the city to the village and maintain partnerships with development actors involved in the community.
Over the years, by methods of research-action-training, Inades Training has developed tools and procedures for such institutions to design their development strategies and to define the institutional arrangements appropriate to their conditions and conducive to good governance .
Inades training helps strengthen the managers of these institutions capacity, state technical services and non-state support, development agents and other microfinance stakeholders. It is mobilized in the definition of national strategies and policies, through participation in consultative frameworks for the consideration of the specific quality of rural Africa.
Inades Training is also involved in the reflection on the place and role of new financing mechanisms of the rural world, the impact of microcredit on economic development and their relationship to poverty reduction in rural Africa. A focus is however on the mobilization of endogenous financial resources (local savings).
