Report reveals women’s rising demand for agricultural finance

A worker waters a sukuma wiki garden at the Kenya Women Finance Trust, in readiness for the Central Agriculture Society of Kenya Show at Kabiruini showground in Nyeri, September 3, 2018. PHOTO | JOSEPH KANYI | NATION MEDIA GROUP

What you need to know:

  • The 2019 baseline report says women in rural areas who are 65 years and older save to secure agri-finance for buying livestock.
  • This is unlike urban women farmers whose interest is to buy more land for expansion.
  • The survey shows that urban women in the 16-34 age bracket are more interested in accessing credit to facilitate transportation of farm produce to markets.

A survey on women's access to agricultural finance in Kenya has revealed crucial variations on the purpose for seeking credit among the young and older women in rural and urban areas.

UN Women, the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United States (FAO) and the European Union (EU) financed the baseline survey.

It was conducted by Agricultural Finance Corporation (AFC), Kenya Institute for Public Policy Research and Analysis (Kippra) and the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS).

The 2019 baseline report that followed says women in rural areas who are 65 years and older save to secure agri-finance for buying livestock.

This is unlike urban women farmers whose interest is to buy more land for expansion.

BARRIERS

In Kenya, poverty disproportionately impacts women, with lack of land and livestock ownership identified as key contributing factors to their socio-economic inequalities.

However, in some parts of the country, women are becoming ingenious in breaking the barrier.

In Embu, for instance, they are persuading their spouses to apportion them coffee bushes and register the crop under their names with cooperative societies, enabling them to sell the produce and earn incomes independently.

Mr Kenneth Murage, a manager at Mwietheri Sacco Society Limited, which serves coffee farmers in Embu, told the Nation that the sacco has more women members than men owing to the disruption of the status quo.

"Husbands are now apportioning their wives some coffee bushes to manage," he said.

DECISION-MAKING

The survey shows that urban women in the 16-34 age bracket are more interested in accessing credit to facilitate transportation of farm produce to markets.

It also shows that a similar cohort in the rural areas seek loans to buy agricultural assets or machinery.

Comparatively, urban women farmers are denied credit due to poor scores and lack of collateral.

The survey also found that women older than 65 had a higher propensity to make their own decisions, free from the influence of men. This was in comparison to those aged 34 and younger.

The report says the proportion of women making  financial decisions is 52 per cent for 16-34 years, 65.8 per cent for 35-64 years and 80.2 per cent for 65 years and above.