By Abubakar Yunusa
AGRA Nigeria, through its strategic grant on building farmers’ and SMEs’ resilience through innovative insurance models and financial instruments, is driving transformative change in the agricultural sector.
In collaboration with Leadway Assurance and Verdure Climate Services, the grant is enabling smallholder farmers and agribusinesses in Niger, Kaduna, and Nasarawa States to access tailored risk management solutions that shield them from climate shocks while unlocking affordable financing opportunities.
This effort underscores AGRA’s commitment to strengthening resilience and productivity across Nigeria’s agricultural value chains.
Building on this initiative, AGRA has inaugurated a Blended Finance Program Working Group in partnership with the National Agricultural Development Fund (NADF). This expanded initiative is designed to mobilize large-scale, affordable finance for Nigeria’s agriculture, with climate resilience at its core. By convening public development finance institutions, commercial lenders, insurers, and climate finance experts, the Working Group will co-create financing structures that reduce risk and expand credit access for farmers and agribusinesses nationwide.
At the launch, Naona Usoroh of NADF affirmed that the blended finance framework will combine concessionary capital with commercial lending, using risk-layering tools to make agriculture bankable at scale.
Chukwuma Kalu of Verdure Climate emphasized that blended finance is essential for scaling climate-smart agriculture, while Ayola Fatona of Leadway Assurance highlighted risk management as the missing link between capital and smallholder farmers. Together, these perspectives reflect a shared commitment to innovation and collaboration in closing Nigeria’s agricultural finance gap.
Looking ahead, the pilot phase of the blended finance initiative, scheduled for the 2026 wet season, will demonstrate how AGRA’s thought leadership through its grant to Leadway and Verdure Climate can mobilize public and private capital for climate-smart agriculture. Lessons from the pilot will inform a national scale-up, reinforcing AGRA’s role as the key conveyor of sustainable agricultural finance solutions in Nigeria.
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