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This report takes stock of the increasingly pluralistic landscape of agricultural small- and medium-sized enterprise (agri-SME) finance in sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia, with the aim to establish a new perspective on the market overall – sizing and segmenting the market in new ways, reflecting on the rapidly accelerating imperative around climate, and identifying new priorities for action.

This report breaks down the market in a more comprehensive and holistic way to show where finance is specifically flowing, via specific types of products from specific types of funders to specific types of agri-SMEs, and indicates that there is a significant and very important role for commercial capital in this market.

Four long-term change priorities are suggested to systematically closing the agri-SME financing gap over time: (i) intentionally growing larger numbers of agri-SMEs into commercially investable prospects to anchor local bank markets for finance; (ii) developing capacity, incentives, and infrastructure for local banks and funds to profitably serve smaller, less commercial agri-SMEs over time; (iii) making blended finance more efficient and effective; and (iv) building the infrastructure around climate finance. These change priorities are expansive in scale and scope, and will require coordinated action from actors across the agri-SME finance ecosystem.