Is Micro-Finance Achieving Its Goal Among Smallholder Farmers in Africa? Empirical Evidence from Kenya Using Propensity Score Matching

George Owuor

No 51470, 2009 Conference, August 16-22, 2009, Beijing, China from International Association of Agricultural Economists

Abstract: With access to formal credit proving almost impossible to smallholder farmers, group based lending is steadily becoming popular in Africa. However, little is documented on the role of such programmes. In this paper, we employ propensity score matching method to evaluate effects of micro-finance credit (MFC) on borrower’s productive performance in Kenya. Our findings reveal that participation in MFC credit improves household productive incomes by a range of between US$ 200 and US$ 260 in a single production period. However, participation in the MFC among smallholder farmers is constrained by low literacy levels, gender differentials in asset endowment, poor road infrastructure, and maintenance of indigenous group structures as key factors for policy intervention

Keywords: Agribusiness; Agricultural Finance; Community/Rural/Urban Development (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009-06-24
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/51470/files/%2 ... inance%20in%20Af.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:iaae09:51470

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.51470

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in 2009 Conference, August 16-22, 2009, Beijing, China from International Association of Agricultural Economists Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by AgEcon Search ().