CGAP - Digitizing Agriculture Value Chains: The Story So far

Smallholder households, estimated at about 500 million globally in low- and middle-income countries, are the largest segment by livelihood of those living under $2 a day. Traditionally excluded from formal financial services, digital financial services represent an opportunity to deepen financial inclusion amongst this segment. One avenue to facilitating this is to digitize the agriculture value chains that some smallholders are a part of. Although just 7% of smallholders are in tight agriculture value chains, digitizing these holds significant benefits for the buyers that smallholders are dependent on, creating a strong incentive that doesn’t exist for non-commercial smallholders or those in loose value chains.