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From Survival to Prosperity: Investing in Africa’s Food Systems’ Missing Link
I remember three women from my journey as a women’s economic empowerment specialist across Africa. Not because their stories were extraordinary, but because they reflect the quiet, persistent reality of entrepreneurship across the continent. The first was in Isiala-Ngwa, Abia State, Nigeria. She stood over towering metal pots of boiling palm fruit, dense smoke from the firewood fire filling the low shed around her. But what stayed with me most was the visible cost of her labour: feet calloused and scarred from years of manually pressing oil, and eyes heavy from constantly blowing life into the flames beneath the pots. Her livelihood was built on sheer endurance, yet prosperity remained painfully out of reach.
The second was in Bela Vista, Mozambique. Her poultry business was expanding, made possible by a working capital loan secured through a microfinance institution via a simple WhatsApp channel. Her determination had not changed overnight. What had changed was access. For once, the financial system had met her halfway.
The third was in Nyanza, Rwanda. A member of a chilli cooperative, she walked me through her three plots of land with her baby strapped to her back, speaking with quiet pride about the six full-time and twenty seasonal workers she now employed. She had started as a farmhand. What transformed her business was not greater ambition, but financial products designed around the rhythm of her harvest cycle.
Three women. Three countries. Three different outcomes. Their success or stagnation had little to do with effort. It had everything to do with whether the systems around them understood their realities.
The $300 Billion Blind Spot
There is a persistent narrative that micro-enterprises remain small because their owners lack sophistication or structure. Spend a day in any rural agrifood market across Africa, and that illusion quickly disappears.
Across Sub-Saharan Africa, MSMEs account for 90 percent of all businesses, yet face a financing gap exceeding $300 billion. For agrifood enterprises alone, the financing shortfall is estimated at $117 billion, constraining productivity, resilience, and job creation across the continent.
This matters because agribusiness already contributes at least 17 percent of Sub-Saharan Africa’s GDP and supports more than 52 percent of employment. Yet despite their central role in food production, women remain among the least served by formal financial systems. In many African countries, women contribute between 60 and 80 percent of food production, but fewer than one in five own land, excluding many from collateral-based lending.
Financial institutions often label these businesses “high risk,” offering products that fail to reflect agricultural cycles, seasonal cash flows, or rural market realities. The result is predictable: income sustains livelihoods but rarely creates wealth. The issue is not a shortage of capital; it is a failure to understand risk.
Too often, financial systems are designed to avoid uncertainty. Agrifood micro-enterprises, shaped by seasonality, climate exposure, and informal operating structures, are therefore excluded by design. What we call a financing gap is, more fundamentally, a perception gap.
A Blueprint for Prosperity
When finance is redesigned to reflect the realities of rural entrepreneurs, growth follows.
This is the principle behind the Financial Resilience through Institutional Strengthening and Expansion (FinRISE) programme.
FinRISE addresses the exclusion of women- and youth-led agrifood enterprises by strengthening the financial market systems best positioned to serve them—fintechs, microfinance institutions, and SACCOs. Its approach combines three catalytic instruments:
Risk-sharing, which reduces exposure and encourages lending to underserved entrepreneurs.
Concessional liquidity, which lowers the cost of capital and enables more flexible financing structures.
Capacity development, which equips financial institutions to design products that are responsive to the realities of agrifood enterprises. Together, these interventions do more than increase access to finance. They reshape how institutions assess opportunity. For women and youth-led enterprises, this means access to affordable financing, stronger business capacity, improved profitability, and greater long-term creditworthiness.
The Case for Systemic Change
FinRISE recognizes a fundamental truth: unlocking prosperity for Africa’s agrifood entrepreneurs requires systemic change. It requires rethinking how institutions lend, how risk is priced, and how financial products are designed.
Its pilot across Kenya, Zambia, and Côte d’Ivoire is more than a programme rollout. It is a test of whether inclusive agrifinance can be both impactful and commercially viable. If proven, it offers a scalable blueprint for transforming agricultural finance across the continent.
Somewhere in Isiala-Ngwa, that woman is still standing over her fire. The question is not whether she is working hard enough to grow: she already is. The real question is whether the systems around her will finally evolve enough to let her. We must urgently scale these models, recognizing that the constraints faced by these entrepreneurs are not unique to one geography; they are systemic, and so must be the solution. Until we do, Africa will continue to be powered by determined entrepreneurs who feed its economies, while remaining locked out of the prosperity they create.
Article by:
Tolulope BABAJIDE, Programme Coordinator, FinRISE
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