Posted on February, 26, 2019 at 08:25 am
RURAL communities in Tanzania and the rest of Africa need financial service the most, yet they remain the largest underserved market for the products.
This came to light during a high level 4th Annual Rural and Microfinance Conference in Tanzania at Bank of Tanzania Conference Center in Dar es Salaam last week. The conference came up with strong resolutions for building resilience to improve livelihoods and inclusive financial services through public private partnership.
According to organisers building resilience means ensuring that rural areas are covered by social security (health and pension) agriculture insurance, financial education and use of technology as well as decent housing/shelter.
The conference reaffirmed that rural financial market are important as they help rural people take advantage of economic opportunities, including promoting gender equality, youth employment and in the process minimize urban rural migration.
Minister of Agriculture, Japhet Hasunga in his opening address called for financing that meets the real needs of the people in rural areas, including provision of health and agriculture insurance services that would mean improved livelihood for farmers. This will go a long way to enable sustainable food security and bring in greater economic development for rural communities.
“The government had made strides in taking development to people including providing electricity in rural areas,” the minister told the conference organised by Tanzania Association of Microfinance Institutions (TAMFI) in collaboration with Marketing, Infrastructure, Value Addition and Rural Finance (MIVARF).
It is important that rural people including farmers have better housing, social security (health and pension), agriculture insurance, financial education among other necessities. This calls for upping up innovative financing to empower rural farmers move to the next level of development.
The minister challenged stakeholders to bring to government solid proposals on how to improve rural financing, taking in mind that, there were challenges that needed to be resolved, including failure of adding value to farm products. The government was in the process of registering farmers, to develop database that improve service provision, he announced.
TAMFI Vice Chairman, Joel Mwakitalu noted that it was apparent that microfinance sector had a great role to play in promoting financial inclusion in Tanzania, and it was possible for stakeholders to work together to create an enabling environment, that will at the end of the
day lead to better livelihood for farmers in the rural areas, who comprise the majority population.
Altemius Millinga, Managing Director, Yetu Microfinance Bank PLC con that the financial depth in Tanzania was very limited with credit to standing at only 17 percent of GDP in bank-centric setting whereby branch networks are concentrated in Arusha, Mwanza and Dar es Salaam.
Thus he laid a strong case for Tanzania Financial Inclusion Framework “based on the concrete improvements that Tanzania would like to see in the lives of all Tanzanians through the use of financial services.”
So far fundamental barriers that limit the growth of financial inclusion in Tanzania include high interest rates, cumbersome documentation and procedures among others.
Microfinance sector stakeholder (Vicoba Champion), Devota Likokola, said despite the many strides made in enabling rural financing, much more needed to be done to empower farmers. “Rural farmers need assured financial inclusion- access to all important financial services including insurance and pension among others. This calls for great thinking to make it possible.
The two day conference brought together over 100 stakeholders comprising farmers, leaders, microfinance stakeholders and policy maker among others.
Source: IPP Media