Senegal Crop Storage Finance Challenge Project

In Progress

Summary

The AgResults Senegal Crop Storage Finance Challenge Project is a five-year US$6.8 million prize competition that aims to drive adoption of Warehouse Receipts Systems (WRS) in Senegal. By encouraging warehouse owners and smallholder producer groups to upgrade existing warehouses and develop collateral-based storage finance schemes, the project hopes to tackle the dual barriers of unsuitable storage infrastructure and limited financing options for vulnerable populations. By using a WRS model, smallholder farmers will benefit from higher prices, increased liquidity, and improved resilience to external shocks. Connexus serves as the Project Manager.

The Challenge Project aims to encourage warehouse improvements and adoption of storage-based finance schemes.
The Problem
Contest Design
Expected Impact
Actual Results
Learning & Evaluation

The problem

Limited Access to Storage and Finance

In Senegal, smallholder farmers cannot maximize their harvest incomes due to limited ability to store crops and inability to access credit needed to finance activities during crop storage. Regarding storage challenges, pests and weather risks cause post-harvest loss among West African farmers. As a result, prices are often depressed immediately after harvest, causing general price volatility. Furthermore, smallholder farmers often run into harvest-time financial pressures as they sell during harvest to meet immediate financial obligations. Until recently, the lack of national regulations around collateral-based storage finance schemes in Senegal has limited their adoption.

Contest design

Theory of Change

The project is designed to build on new WRS laws and regulations in Senegal by encouraging warehouse operators, farmer cooperatives, and finance providers to coordinate to put in place storage-based finance schemes that benefit smallholder farmers. By incentivizing these actors to upgrade warehouses, obtain WRS licenses, and provide collateral-based financing for smallholder farmers, the competition will increase accessibility and availability of storage as well as boost participation in storage-based finance. Through use of WRS, farmers will increase their sales revenue and expand their options for marketing crops after harvest. Simultaneously, these smallholders will have greater access to finance through their ability to collateralize their crops to obtain loans. These efforts will contribute to the broader goals of improving incomes and resilience among smallholder farmers.

Prize Structure

The competition will be segmented into two phases: The first phase will focus on improving warehouse infrastructure and serve as a gateway to the second phase, which will focus on storage. In Phase 1, AgResults will provide payments to competitors for each warehouse that they upgrade to meet national WRS licensing standards. In Phase 2, competitors will receive an annual per-unit prize based on the value-at-sale of stored crops.

Expected impact

The project is expected to introduce key stakeholders to the benefits of storage-based finance schemes. These schemes are expected to grant farmers opportunities to safely store crops in warehouses, reducing post-harvest loss and allowing farmers to use stored crops as collateral to obtain loans. Using WRS, smallholder farmers will increase agency in market decision-making, and be positioned to seek out higher income opportunities in certain value chains. WRS schemes in priority value chains could also enable women-led cooperatives to gain new positions of power and influence in the market.

AgResults expects to achieve the following by the end of the project:

Actual results

Learning & Evaluation

What We’ve Learned through Implementation

This section shares our learning from the Senegal Crop Storage Finance project design and implementation. Further details can be found in the Learning Library.

Recent News and Learning

Below are recent news and learning products related to Senegal.
Alt Intro Image
Published: September 30, 2020

Request for Proposals for Project Management Services for the Senegal Storage Finance Challenge Project

The Secretariat of AgResults (“Secretariat”) invit...

Evaluation Design

The evaluation for the Senegal Crop Storage Finance prize competition is led by IDinsight. More details coming soon!

Evaluation Stage

Coming soon!

Project team

FALILOU KANE

CONNEXUS CORPORATION

Team Lead, Connexus Corporation

Currently the Team Lead for the AgResults Senegal Crop Storage Finance Challenge Project, Falilou Kane is an expert with more than 30 years of experience in corporate banking, rural and agricultural market development, access to finance, senior housing finance, and international development. He has a deep understanding of the West and Central Africa banking and finance industry. Prior to his current role, Mr. Kane was part of a team that conducted a Financial Market Assessment in Senegal for Atlantic Bank International – US Small Business Administration – Connexus Corporation. Mr. Kane obtained a Master’s degree in Private Law from the University of Dakar, Senegal, as well as a Bachelor’s degree in Banking and Finance.
NAYÉ BATHILY

CONNEXUS CORPORATION

Technical Officer, Connexus Corporation

Serving as the Technical Officer for the AgResults Senegal Crop Storage Finance Challenge Project, Mrs. Bathily holds a Masters in Sustainable Management of Agro-Horticultural Ecosystems, a Masters in Natural Sciences, and a Bachelor’s in Life Sciences from UCAD. She has over six years of experience in financing and structuring of the agricultural value chain and has direct experience securing bank financing via third-party collateral managers and warehouse receipt systems. Most recently, she was the Director of Operations at ACE Global where she managed a portfolio of 25 collateral management transactions and operations including managing partnerships with financial institutions and clients, conducting risk assessments, coordinating a team, and setting up a mechanism for the warehouse receipt system for the peanut and cashew sectors. Prior she held multiple roles at Agro-Concept including Project Manager, Program Officer, and Program manager where she managed an agricultural credit portfolio, credit committees and partnerships with financial institutions and producer organizations, monitored activities, and recruited and coordinated field teams. 
TODD CROSBY

CONNEXUS CORPORATION

Connexus Corporation Home Office

Currently serving as the Vice President of International Programs for Connexus Corporation, Todd Crosby has 25 years of experience working in community development in Burkina Faso, Ghana, Mali, Niger, and Senegal. Prior to joining Connexus, he was Director of Resilience for NCBA CLUSA and Chief of Party for the USAID Senegal Yaajeende program, which used a food systems approach to resolve issues of food security, hunger, and malnutrition. His technical expertise includes the use of private sector business approaches such as social marketing, social franchising, micro-credit, and value chain methodologies for development. Mr. Crosby holds a Master’s degree in Social Sciences from the University of Chicago.