Africa’s next agricultural transformation will be driven by women, if we invest in their digital and financial capacity.
By Wangui Muna
Women grow much of Africa’s food but receive less than 10 percent of the credit that fuels its production. This imbalance limits productivity reduces household income, and leaves families more exposed to food insecurity.
Women cultivate the land but remain both financially and digitally excluded. Many lack access to data, tools, and digital records that determine who qualifies for credit, insurance, or investment. Their contributions often go unrecognized, and their potential underfinanced. Closing this gap is one of the most practical ways to strengthen agricultural value chains and build a more inclusive and resilient food system across Africa.
The Digital Divide Behind the Finance Gap
Across rural Africa, barriers such as limited collateral, restrictive social norms, and distance from financial institutions continue to restrict women’s access to finance. But behind these familiar challenges lies an overlooked opportunity, the potential of digital financial services (DFS) to expand access, build confidence, and give women greater control over their resources.
Over the past decade, Africa has become a global leader in digital payments. According to the GSMA Mobile Money Report 2024, the continent now accounts for about 65 percent of the world’s mobile money transaction value and nearly three quarters of all transactions.
Still, women remain underrepresented in the digital economy. Across Sub-Saharan Africa, they are about 12 percentage points less likely than men to own a financial account. Closing this gap is one of the most effective ways to boost agricultural productivity and rural incomes. As climate shocks intensify and financing options remain limited, the digital divide risks deepening inequality, leaving millions of women farmers without the tools they need to manage risk and adapt to change.
When Digital Finance Reaches the First Mile
Digital finance, ranging from mobile money and savings wallets to digital credit, reduces the need for collateral, cuts transaction costs, and gives rural women the flexibility and privacy to manage their finances with confidence. Beyond individual gains, digital inclusion strengthens entire agricultural value chains. When women can pay suppliers, receive farm payments, and save or borrow through secure digital platforms, cooperatives and agribusinesses become more efficient, transparency increases, and trust deepens across the system.
In communities supported by Heifer International, digital finance is already driving measurable change:
- In Kenya, partnerships between dairy cooperatives and fintechs companies have reduced milk spoilage by up to 30 per cent, increasing incomes and stability for women farmers.
- In Uganda, farmer groups in the Access to Innovative Finance (A2IF) programme use digital recordkeeping to track yields and repayment histories, data that helps cooperatives negotiate better loan terms and strengthen financial discipline.
- In Senegal, through the Meliteji Wasu project, implemented with Laiterie du Berger and the Mastercard Foundation, women dairy producers now receive digital payments that improve cash flow and reduce reliance on middlemen.
These experiences show that when digital tools are designed to meet women’s needs, they enhance livelihoods, strengthen cooperatives, and boost local economies.
Gender, Climate, and Inclusion: The New Equation
Digital finance is more than a gender or technology issue; it is a cornerstone of climate resilience. Women smallholder farmers are on the frontlines of climate change, making daily decisions about when to plant, what to harvest, and how to adapt to shifting weather patterns. Gender responsive climate finance recognizes that investing in women’s access to capital, data, and digital tools is among the most effective ways to build adaptive and resilient food systems.
When a woman can use digital credit to buy drought-tolerant seeds, insure her harvest, or install solar irrigation, she becomes an active driver of adaptation rather than a victim of crisis.
Each dollar of climate finance that reaches her strengthens families, improves nutrition, and reinforces the stability of local food systems.
Building an Inclusive Capital Value Chain
True inclusion requires a systemic shift, from scattered pilot projects to national systems and policies that embed equity across the financing chain. From global investors to local cooperatives, every link in the capital value chain must intentionally include women as active participants and decision makers.
Achieving this demands a coordinated, multi-level approach:
- Global climate funds and other donor funds should allocate resources to build gender responsive digital infrastructure and first mile connectivity.
- Financial institutions, agribusinesses, and fintechs need to apply blended finance and data driven tools to reduce the risk of lending to women smallholders.
- Cooperatives, youth led ventures, and women farmers must be recognized and financed as viable, investable actors in agricultural growth.
When inclusion is built into every level of the system, finance stops leaking through exclusion and starts growing opportunity.
Scaling Climate Finance for Women
Africa’s governments are calling for finance that reaches the people working closest to the land. Yet if funds continue to move only through traditional channels, they risk bypassing the women who are integral to sustaining the continent’s food systems.
Gender smart digital finance offers a practical way to direct resources where they are most needed, making capital flows transparent, inclusive, and accountable. By connecting global finance to the first mile, it ensures adaptation funding reaches women farmers leading change on the ground.
Governments can reinforce this shift by embedding digital inclusion into National Adaptation Plans (NAPs) and climate finance frameworks, treating every digital wallet or credit line extended to a woman farmer as an investment in long term resilience.
The Future We Are Financing
Digital finance is about unlocking opportunity. When women farmers can borrow, save, and trade digitally, they strengthen households, grow local markets, and expand Africa’s capacity to adapt to climate change.
The challenge now is scale, reaching more women, faster, and ensuring they are fully included in the digital economy. Gender, climate, and finance are not separate priorities; they are parts of the same system. When they move together, Africa’s food systems become stronger and more resilient.
Wangui Muna is the Director of Innovative Finance – Africa at Heifer International. She leads efforts to expand access to finance for smallholder farmers through inclusive, technology-driven solutions that strengthen agricultural value chains and build climate resilience.
