AFEX Commodities Exchange Ltd, an organisation in the commodity exchange market, says it is working assiduously to bridge financing gaps being experienced by smallholder farmers to break the circle of poverty among them.
The Business and Development Manager of the organisation, Mr Akinyinka Akintunde made this known in an interview with The Tide’s source yesterday in Abuja.
Akintunde said the move became necessary following untold hardship suffered by smallholder farmers in spite of accounting for over 70 per cent of the country’s farm produce.
The manager said that in spite of the huge potentials in agriculture, bank credit allocation to the sector was less than five per cent, while financial intervention had made little impact over the years.
He said as part of efforts to bridge those financing gaps, AFEX had launched a number of platforms to engage farmers and to assist them access credit facilities.
“Our participation in the Agriculture Summit Africa is to pronounce the role of AFEX in bridging the financing gap. We are talking of a trillion dollar economy across Africa.
”One of our mandates is to ensure that the small holder farmers, who are responsible for producing over 70 per cent of the products we consume, have a fair return on what they produce.
”This is what formed the partnership between AFEX, Sterling Bank, to create a platform that was unveiled at the just concluded Agriculture Summit Africa.
”The main idea behind it is, producers of commodities will have access to financing using their commodities as collateral and this has brought great benefits for them.
”It allows them to ride on the incremental price of commodities without losing stock. It gives them access to credit and makes them financially independent.
”Once you have all these in place, you discover that the circle of poverty that small holder farmers are used to, gets broken and from there a farmer’s productivity will improve and his livelihood will be much more positively affected.”