The five schemes under investigation in this study are a typology of government- or donor-sponsored, integrated risk management mechanisms aimed specifically at de-risking finance and investment in agricultural and agro-industries through a coordinated and holistic combination of policy, financial and risk management instruments, coupled with a set of financial and non-financial (dis-)incentives for market actors.  

They can be segmented into two typologies based on institutional form: 

Project-based de-risking schemes: 

• Programme for Rural Outreach of Financial Innovations and Technologies (PROFIT) in Kenya; 
• Livelihoods and Food Security Programme (LFSP) in Zimbabwe; 
• Agricultural Financing Incentive Mechanism Support Project (ProMIFA) in Togo

Stand-alone de-risking institutions that have an independent and incorporated institutional form: 

• Nigeria Incentive-based Risk Sharing System for Agricultural Lending (NIRSAL)  
• Ghana Incentive-based Risk Sharing System for Agricultural Lending (GIRSAL)  

These schemes typically include several coordinated and mutually reinforcing instruments, including:  

• A risk sharing facility (RSF) in the form of a partial credit guarantee 

• A technical assistance facility (TAF) to support supply - and demand-side capacity building  

• Support for the development agricultural insurance 

• A direct financing facility or Line of Credit (LoC) 

• Support for digital finance-based solutions 

The study reveals that the overall relevance of these schemes can be considered robust and potentially meaningfully responsive to the challenges and opportunities for de-risking agricultural finance and investment. By coupling interventions in rural financial market development and agricultural value chain development, they reflect a prudent recognition of their interdependent nature. In doing so, the schemes constitute a move away from a more narrow, instrumental approach to promoting agricultural finance and make efforts to address underlying value chain-level and enabling environment-level factors that often represent binding constraints in rural financial sector development.  

The review also revealed the tangible impact of the various instruments deployed across a number of indicators. This includes: 

• increasing financial services to producers and agri-SMEs; 

• supporting the development of innovative products and rural outreach strategies; 

• the formation of some effective coordination mechanisms and partnerships; and 

• the shaping of incentives to attract financing.