(AGENPARL) – Thu 03 April 2025 [cid:824298a3-9718-4846-beb2-a16f2ff28146]
A risky business no more
Increasing investments in agriculture changes minds and turns heads in Benin
©FAO/Giulio Napolitano
“Access to credit is the core of rural development in reality because the rural world is limited, financially and economically. When there is land, labour and state structures that offer various forms of support, but there is no funding that comes to assist, it becomes complicated… So, financing really comes as a solution,” says Cyrille Hounsou, Director General of Pebco Bethesda, an FAO-partner, microfinance institution.
A more energetic woman, you will never meet. Edith Mireille Deguenon, who goes by Mireille, walks around the grounds of her business with quick steps filled with purpose and enthusiasm. Her past is full of experiences, her future full of plans. You can tell just by the way she looks around that she has a vision for Oasis des Enfants, the agribusiness she began to address malnutrition in children.
In Benin, between nine and ten percent of the population suffers from food insecurity and about 34 percent of children under five years old are affected by chronic malnutrition, a condition often beginning with malnourished mothers.
Mireille sought financing to bring her plans of Oasis des Enfants to life, collaborating with Hervé Kassa, a facilitator trained by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) to use an innovative tool called RuralInvest. RuralInvest, developed and managed by FAO’s Investment Centre, is a software that helps farmers and entrepreneurs transform business data, like agricultural yields, into structured business plans.
Through the Agricultural Development and Market Access Support (PADAAM) project, RuralInvest is becoming an increasingly important instrument to support agriculture investments, showing significant results in facilitating access to financing from banks and decentralized financial systems.
Financed by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), the PADAAM project showcases how FAO’s technical expertise and IFAD’s financial support, in partnership with public and private stakeholders, drives impactful large-scale investments.
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