Agenda

RDFI notes that “Blended Finance has the potential to become a transformative solution for future development efforts and to serve as a major pillar of the sustainable development financing framework.” This statement equally applies to agriculture. “Blended finance funds combining public, philanthropic and private capital may be a solution to the problem of private capital not reaching the agricultural sector. The gap in smallholder finance can only be significantly reduced if public sector finance, now mostly used directly with little or no impact on private sector agricultural funding, can instead become focused on achieving leverage.

By focusing on the practicalities of blending finance for agriculture, the conference aims to contribute to the knowledge base on how this can best be done, and to bring together key stakeholders who, working together, can catalyse the change towards more impactful public sector funding of agriculture.

The conference is expected to lead to improved practices among participants related to leveraging public funding for agricultural finance; and to lead to a number of new partnerships (and related financing mechanisms) among participants for mitigating and sharing risks in smallholder finance.