Impact story: A conversation with three clients
In 2020, with funding from the D-Prize, Founders Pledge, and an incredible network of grassroots donors, we delivered post-harvest loans to 200 families in Gombe, helping transform the lives of ~1,400 people. To make sure we were reaching those most in need, we prioritized recruiting clients living in extreme poverty (measured by Innovations for Poverty Action’s Poverty Probability Index). Among those who joined our client community are three women: Aisha, Asabe, and Ummi. These are their stories.
Currently, women make up the minority of our borrowers. Discovering these women’s experiences with our loan helps us better understand not just the impact of our loans generally, but also the unique benefits extending credit to female borrowers can have, as well as how we as an organization can do more to reach female clients in the future.
I. Aisha
Aisha is a smallholder farmer in the Kwami Local Government Area of Gombe State, Nigeria. Along with her husband and five kids, she lives in a remote village where she farms white maize and cowpea. Like most farmers in Northern Nigeria, Aisha exclusively farms during the rainy season. Once she harvests, her challenge is to stretch that singular harvest across an entire year, while somehow meeting all of her family’s needs in the process. Asked about the impact of our post-harvest loan and storage product on her life, Aisha’s general story was in keeping with what we hear from most of our clients:
“After completing my harvest, I used the loan to invest in a small supply of peanuts, which I used to make and sell cooking oil. This way I was able to make enough each month to avoid selling my crops. I even used my new income to buy two extra bags of maize and one extra bag of cowpea. I’ve never held my harvest for this long! I am so happy that I now will be able to sell my crops for a much higher price after Ramadan in late May or June.”
This is the most common use-case of our loan: after paying harvest costs, our clients typically use what money they have left over to invest in a small enterprise (e.g. rearing sheep, selling fruits, fixing shoes) to earn a small monthly income which enables them to delay the sale of their crops until they can earn a much higher price. This is exactly what we want to see as an organization!
But that’s not all. Aisha also eagerly described additional benefits from the loan beyond monetary gain:
“When my child fell ill, I was able to use my own income to take her to the hospital. Now when we need salt, maggi seasoning, or something that costs 50 or 100 naira [$0.10–$0.20], I can buy it myself without asking my husband. He respects me much more than he did before.”
Aisha did not only experience the same standard benefits of post-harvest credit that we typically see in our borrowers (male or female) — the loan she received also significantly increased her economic freedom and autonomy within her household.
Aisha, a smallholder farmer in Kwami LGA, Gombe State, Nigeria, pictured with one of her five children.
II. Asabe
Asabe, too, found clever ways to invest her loan, scaling her business selling essential home products. Asked about how she spent the loan, Asabe relayed that:
After I finished my harvest, I used the loan to invest in my business of selling home products, like pots and plates. Men come to me whenever they are getting married, as these kinds of products are common marital gifts. I also saw the opportunity to profit from selling maize in the lean season. So with my remaining loan balance I bought three bags of maize to supplement my groundnut harvest. Insha’Allah, I am going to sell them all in June and July when prices are higher.
This feedback offers an important insight about the suitability of post-harvest loans for different types of agricultural households. Even if clients are subsistence farmers, post-harvest loans can help them earn more — i.e. if a farmer plans to consume all of their harvest themselves, rather than sell it, they can still use the loan to buy additional crops on the market after the harvest, store them, and sell them later in the year when prices are higher, while consuming all of the crops they grew themselves.
But, again, Asabe stressed that for her personally, the biggest shift in her life which resulted from the loan was not monetary gain, but rather the additional freedom that monetary gain created. Like Aisha, Asabe reported no longer having to ask for permission from her husband to buy little things, as well as an increased ability to contribute to household needs, which she felt resulted in more respect for her from her family.
Asabe, pictured in front of her house.
III. Ummi
Ummi, for her part, saw an opportunity for profit further up the agricultural value-chain. Most white maize is not consumed raw. Rather, it is milled locally into a fine powder which is used to make tuwon shinkafa, a delicious, sticky mass of carbohydrates which is often paired with spicy vegetable soups. Ummi rented a milling machine using her loan, and then in turn rented that milling machine out to other members of her community, offering reliable and affordable milling services in her area, generating a tidy profit in the process.
We asked Ummi what changed most in her life after she received the loan. Her answer was unequivocal — and identical to those of Aisha and Asabe:
I feel freedom and respect from my family that I have not had before. I can buy things without asking my husband for permission. And when my husband is struggling with money, I am able to contribute and pitch in.
IV. Takeaways
These qualitative interviews with female farmers in our portfolio are the beginning steps of our quest to better understand how we can best provide assistance to the communities we serve in northeastern Nigeria, and how returns to credit vary between genders in the context we operate in. Promisingly, at the moment, it seems both as though the core benefits of post-harvest loans (reduced seasonal food insecurity and hunger; increased incomes) generalize to female borrowers, and that post-harvest capital can help economically empower female clients.
Currently, we are working to scale our program to 1,000 families in 2021 and 2,000 families in 2022. As we do so, we plan to make targeting female clients a top priority.
