A Complementary Online Resource to the Guide to the Use of Digital Financial Services in Agriculture

USAID has just released an interactive online resource to complement The Guide to the Use of Digital Financial Services in Agriculture, published in 2016. The Guide is intended to support USAID Mission staff and Feed the Future implementing partners in diagnosing and assessing value chains to determine where and how digital financial services can help address key challenges.

The online resource serves as an interactive, step-by-step tool to walk implementing partners and USAID Mission staff through the various steps of the Guide’s methodology, including an assessment of value chain challenges, an assessment of existing financial services and, finally, an assessment of digital financial feasibility (with the particular market and value chain in question). The methodology is designed to build on partners’ knowledge of agriculture and value chain challenges in their specific contexts to develop the most appropriate approach. As pictured here, each step includes links to downloadable, printable worksheets to help partners take notes and follow along with the methodology.

The Guide also includes numerous examples of how USAID implementing partners have leveraged digital financial services at various points in the agricultural value chain to address the challenges experienced by smallholder farmers and in markets with varying levels of maturity, ranging from nascent to advanced. Case studies from Haiti, Uganda, Ghana, Bangladesh, Nigeria, and Zimbabwe are highlighted through the Guide and in the online resource, in addition to three new case study videos to complement the written case studies focusing on Ghana, Bangladesh, and Malawi.

We encourage you to share these resources widely and look forward to hearing from you about how you are using the Guide or utilizing digital financial services in your agriculture work. You can share examples via this form, or feel free to reach out directly to me at nibrand@usaid.gov.

Digital Development for Feed the Future is a collaboration between USAID’s Global Development Lab and Bureau for Food Security and focuses on integrating a suite of coordinated digital tools and technologies into Feed the Future activities to accelerate agriculture-led economic growth and improved nutrition.

Feed the Future is America’s initiative to combat global hunger and poverty. By applying Digital Financial Services solutions to food security challenges, these efforts will move us closer to reaching Feed the Future’s goals of inclusive agriculture sector growth and improved nutritional status for smallholder farmers.