Agriculture Financing, Investment & Trade
Bridging the missing middle in agricultural finance
Access to finance is what enables businesses to grow their markets, but many finance institutions find agriculture too risky to invest in or may have limited knowledge of what comprises an attractive and feasible product offering in the sector. Consequently, agriculture sector SMEs struggle to access essential financial services, or can do so only at high cost, despite their significant contributions to emerging economies. They often occupy the 'missing middle,' a term that describes the widening gap in available funding and the hurdles they face in obtaining the necessary services to grow and scale their businesses. These enterprises are too large to be served by microfinance institutions but too small and high-risk for the formal banking sector to support. More widely, smallholder farmers, farmer groups, and wider micro enterprises continue to require financing from crisis resilient microfinance institutions, and larger agribusinesses need competitively provided and secure financing at scale to facilitate their export activities.
Our understanding of the SME journey
NIRAS works with both investees and investors, including microfinance and traditional banks, to tackle sector challenges. We connect projects and businesses with suitable financial institutions, offering investment readiness support. For investors, we deliver advisory services to reduce investment risk and enhance the financial and non-financial product offering to SMEs, farmers, women, and youth entrepreneurs. We also support MSME agribusinesses in developing solid business plans, and provide technical assistance to ensure they become bankable clients for financing institutions.
NIRAS has extensive experience applying digital innovations across agricultural value chains, deploying solutions tailored to farmers’ needs that modernise farming practices, improve access to finance, and connect farms with markets and input suppliers.
Our specialist services:
- Development and support to implementation of financial institution agricultural investment strategies
- Multi-actor green value chain financing product development adapted to agriculture client segments
- Training, capacity development, and awareness raising to financial sector actors active in the agriculture sector
- Mesofinance approaches in support of agribusiness SMEs responding to the ‘missing middle’
- Digital MSME finance and technology innovations
- Supporting financial institutions to adhere to environmental, social, and governance (ESG) requirements
- Climate risk insurance
- Supervising deal closure and management
- Capacity building on trade regulations and stimulating export market connections
Highlighted projects
Promoting inclusive and sustainable economic growth in Ghana by strengthening trade and competitiveness in key sectors
Phase two of the Ghana Private Sector Competitiveness Programme (GPSCP II), is a bilateral initiative between the Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO) and the Government of Ghana, which aims to promote inclusive and sustainable economic growth by strengthening trade and competitiveness in the country's cashew nut and oil palm value chains. The GPSCP focuses on improving the enabling environment and boosting productivity and competitiveness in these industries, using demand-driven, context-specific methods guided by the MSD approach. The programme team collaborates with the Tree Crops Development Authority (TCDA) to help fulfill its mandate of advancing target tree crops. Through a rapid response mechanism, the GPSCP II manages a grant fund to support impactful policy and strategy reforms by relevant government bodies, enhancing market systems in both value chains. Additionally, under the 'Development Partnership with the Private Sector' scheme, the programme encourages innovation among stakeholders in oil palm and cashew sectors to address key market functions such as access to finance, skilled labor, and business strengthening for broader sectoral development.
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Rapid crisis and recovery solutions, enhancing the resilience of PROPARCO’s partner financial institutions
PROPARCO—the private sector financing arm of Agence Française de Développement Group— has establed a Crisis Emergency Response Technical Assistance Facility (CERTAF) to deliver comprehensive capacity development to banking, microfinance, and non-banking financial institutions (FIs) that serve as intermediaries offering both direct and indirect support to MSMEs amid health emergencies, global conflict, and climate change. The EU-funded facility is dedicated to providing rapid crisis response and recovery solutions while strengthening the resilience of PROPARCO’s partner financial institutions. NIRAS is delivering technical assistance designed to:
- Provide advisory services to FIs, enabling them to identify optimal strategies for safeguarding employees and customers against current and future crises;
- Support FIs in adapting their business models, products, and operations to effectively address the evolving needs of MSMEs;
- Support MSMEs to withstand current and forthcoming crises and protect jobs and economic opportunities through business advisory services;
- Actively support the water, agriculture, sanitation, and health sector MSMEs.
As part of its tailored technical assistance, one of the six partner FIs—a prominent microfinance institution in Senegal—is receiving guidance on the development and implementation of an agricultural financing strategy. This support encompasses overall strategic planning and operational execution, designing microfinance products utilising multi-value chain node financing mechanisms, formulating a corporate sector-specific communications strategy and implementation plan, enhancing banking software systems for improved disaggregation of agricultural loan data, and securing access to climate and green financing guarantees and credit lines for the institution.
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