Online Reporter
Business Reporter
LOCAL financial institutions and insurance firms are facing intense pressure to abandon legacy credit assessment models and roll out flexible risk-mitigation frameworks to integrate female smallholder farmers directly into mainstream national value chains.
The call took centre stage at the Women in Agriculture of Zimbabwe (WIAZ) annual conference held in Harare last week.
Women in Agriculture Zimbabwe (WIAZ) is an advocacy and networking organisation dedicated to economically empowering female farmers.
With more than 14 000 members, WIAZ focuses on building capacity, promoting climate-smart agriculture, connecting women to markets, and advocating for equitable land rights and financial inclusion in Zimbabwe’s agricultural sector.
Mr Simba Guzha, regional project manager for Voluntary Service Overseas (VSO) in Zimbabwe, criticised traditional commercial banking frameworks for systematically excluding the country’s primary food producers.
According to Mr Guzha, smallholder farmers drive the bulk of national production and 70 percent of these rural farmers are women.
“What we are seeing on the ground is that banks still rely on a legacy “heritage approach” that demands static physical collateral, such as urban title deeds,” Mr Guzha said.
“Yet, smallholder farmers—70 percent of whom are women in rural communities—do not have access to title deeds.
“If banks only look at these traditional assets, they miss the biggest demographic driving production.”
As a corrective policy shift, Mr Guzha urged financial institutions to adopt modern, decentralised credit models.
These include group lending structures utilising social collateral, digital transaction history tracking via mobile money platforms like EcoCash and Warehouse Receipt Financing.
Under a warehouse receipt system, smallholders can secure commercial bank loans backed simply by the verified volume and value of commodity yields stored in certified depositories.
