RUFIN’s Intervention Lifts 200 Women

The Rural Finance Institu
tion Building (RUFIN) Programme’s intervention has empowered more than 200 women involved in agriculture in Dogonruwa community, Kastina State, in the effort to reduce poverty in the area.
This is contained in a progress report of the programme covering April 2013 to February 2014 and made available to The Tide source, recently.
RUFIN is being implemented in 12 states across the six geopolitical zones (two from each zone) with financial assistance form the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) a UN agency.
The programme, which is being implemented over a seven-year period, specifically targets marginalised groups such as women, young people and those with physical disabilities.
The objective of this programme is to strengthen microfinance institutions and establish linkages between them and formal financial institutions.
It lays the foundation for the long-term development of a sustainable rural financial system that will eventually operate throughout the country.
By reaching out to poor rural people, the programme ensures that they gain access to financial services and can invest in improving productivity in agriculture and small businesses.
According to the report, the women, who were able to access credit are now  farming vegetable, processing and selling groundnut oil and other by products like ‘kulikuli’, with an average capital of N5,000 and monthly profit of N1,000 to N2,000.
The report stated that the women groups started with a loan of N20,000 per member and progressively increased to N80,000 per member currently.
“As a result of access to credit, the women’s capital grew from the average of N5,000 to an average of N160,000 with monthly profit of N13,000 to N18,000,” the report said.
The report noted that the women now own a number of assets which include cows, goats, sheep, furniture and motorcycle.
Others are grinding machine, bags of farms produce – grains, beans, millet, corn, rice etc — which total on the average at N110,000 per person in asset as savings.
According to the report, RUFIN’s intervention in Epe community, Lagos State, a community known for livestock farming and aquaculture, had provided farmers greater access to capital.
It said that access to credit assisted the beneficiaries grow from their initial average capital of between N5,000 and  N10,000 to about N120,000 on the average with monthly profit of between N12,000 and N15,000.

President Goodluck Jonathan, Governor Ibrahim Shema of Katsina, Minister of Agriculture, Dr Akinwumi Adesina with the trainees at Songhai Katsina Initiative during an inspection visit to the farm, recently.