Financial Inclusion and Cluster Development Project (FINCLUDE) aims to improve prosperity and resilience of Swazi smallholders and micro-entrepreneurs through increasingly profitable and resilient links to markets and appropriate financial services. Its development objective is to increase returns from sustainable farm and non-farm enterprise for rural people, including poor and youth, through efficient public and private sector investment. This will be measured against the targets of: 6,750 beneficiaries’ achieving annual return on labour in farming or non-farm enterprises of >120% of unskilled wage rate.
FINCLUDE has three components:
Component 1: Inclusive Cluster Development. It aims to facilitate cluster brokering and investment, which will catalyse the emergence of competitive clusters for products with confirmed market potential and comparative advantages for smallholder production.
Component 2: Increasing supply of rural financial services. It aims to i) address the information gap between supply and demand for financial services; and ii) facilitate partnerships with Financial Institutions to increase loan supply and improve savings culture.
Component 3: Climate Resilient Decision Making and Investment. It aims to i) provide climate information services for producers, traders and bankers to better manage their business; ii) build a Climate Investment Facility to leverage investments in climate resilience by producers, traders and governmen; and iii) improve access to climate finance.
The co-financing need of this project is related to Component 3.