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Periodical article | Leiden University catalogue | WorldCat |
Title: | Production Credit for African Small-Holders: Conditions for Private Provision |
Authors: | Gordon, Ann Goodland, Andrew |
Year: | 2000 |
Periodical: | Savings and Development |
Volume: | 24 |
Issue: | 1 |
Period: | January |
Pages: | 55-84 |
Language: | English |
Geographic terms: | Uganda Zimbabwe |
Subjects: | agricultural credit small farms cotton industry Agriculture, Natural Resources and the Environment Development and Technology Economics and Trade |
External link: | https://www.jstor.org/stable/25830714 |
Abstract: | It was hoped that market reforms in sub-Saharan Africa would unleash the private sector, such that farmers would benefit from access to new markets and dynamic privately provided services. The reality is that commercial activity has been highly selective and often disappointing. Many farmers face a deterioration in market access and services, including credit. This paper examines the conditions for private sector provision of production credit for cotton smallholders. Drawing on fieldwork conducted in Uganda and Zimbabwe in 1998/1999, it analyses the performance of two contrasting approaches to smallholder credit. These schemes have coverage far in excess of any other formal sector source of credit for smallholders (300,000 and 53,000 farmers respectively). The Zimbabwean scheme is an apparently commercially sustainable text book model of how to run such a scheme. The Ugandan scheme is paternalistic, institutionally complicated and subject to inefficiencies in its operation, but nonetheless a potentially significant improvement on the 'without scheme' scenario. Bibliogr., notes, ref., sum. in English and French. |