Small-holder credit: Roles of farmers, government and private sector

The project purpose was to develop and promote efficient and effective crop marketing and credit systems. It focused on the use of credit to improve access by resource-poor farmers to productivity-enhancing purchased farm inputs. Two cotton input credit schemes were studied in detail, both still in a state of evolution and development. Each has coverage far in excess of any other formal sources of credit available to smallholders (60,000 farmers in Zimbabwe and 300,000 farmers in Uganda). They are particularly interesting, moreover, because both are private sector initiatives, and the Uganda example has especially strong poverty focus