GVA Research Presentation at The 5th International Conference on Financial Services (IFS)

As part of our advisory work with The World Bank Group, GVA Research on Thurs 10/1/15 presented “Agriculture And Mobile Financial Services” in plenary session at The University of South Africa’s 5th International Conference on Financial Services. With the theme, “Leveraging Mobile Technology for Financial Inclusion”, the conference explored the pervasive nature of mobile technology in the provision of inclusive financial services (for more information, please see: http://www.unisa.ac.za/ifs).

Specifically, our presentation examined how advances in data capture and analysis can support the extension of crop insurance to subsistence farmers, thus mitigating risk for a significantly “at risk” population and potentially allowing their access to formal financial lenders with a lower cost of capital. We presented a case study of how an East African venture “Kilimo Salama” backed by The World Bank’s International Finance Corporation has succeeded in this area with the net result of increasing planting by 19% and incomes by 16% for the subsistence farmers covered. In June 2014, “Kilimo Salama” was spun off as a private company, Agriculture and Climate Risk Enterprise Ltd. (for more information, please see: http://acreafrica.com/). We thank Professor Daniel Makina, Ph.D. of The University of South Africa for his invitation to participate in the Conference.

International Conference on Financial Services (IFS) 2015: Agriculture and Mobile Financial Services from David Garrity

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