ETHIOPIA: Improving access to finance for Ethiopian agricultural SMEs

Agriculture, the backbone of Ethiopia's economy is facing a bottleneck; the low investment capacity of smallholder farmers and the small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) which provides these farmers with goods and services (input and technical training) and purchases their products for processing, marketing and exporting.

While large companies are the core target of commercial banks, SMEs’ often find few appropriate financial solutions from financial institutions. This is mostly due to the lack of financial products adapted to the needs of farmers. 

Credit risk analysis  by financial institutions perceive SMEs as a high-potential, but very risky customer segment due to the poor quality of financing requests made by  SMEs, whose records are often unsatisfactory (weakness of financial statements, incomplete justifications, etc.).