From the Editors,

The African Rural and Agricultural Credit Association (AFRACA), The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and the Rural Development Department (ARD) of the World Bank jointly organised an expert meeting in Johannesburg from 1-3 April on risk management in lending to the agricultural value chain. The total of some 35 experts who attended the meeting concluded that financing agriculture is viable and sustainable if supported by sound risk assessment and risk management at all levels in the agricultural value chain. Although they recognised the importance of employing financial risk management instruments, such as insurance, adapted to local conditions, the participants felt that too much attention is generally given to ex-post strategies to the prejudice of ex-ante, on-farm risk assessment and management strategies that are often more cost-effective and recommended a blend of the two strategies.

The recommendations spanned over a large number of topics such as financial literacy, leasing, typologies of financial institutions, insurance, aggregation of producers, etc. They will be detailed in a meeting publication that will be posted on the RFLC as soon as it is ready. For those interested, we have meanwhile made the power point presentations of the meeting available as well as the abbreviated findings and recommendations. To view them, please click on Johannesburg 2009.

As a direct follow-up to the meeting and in an effort to widen the discussion on the topic of Lending to the Agricultural Value Chain, the RFLC has offered to host a discussion forum on the topic. We hope that many of you will take time to look at the aforementioned presentations and conclusions and offer your experiences and views. We expect that the forum will be up and running in the coming week. Look out for it on the RFLC home page.

We are finally pleased to announce that The World Bank, together with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation will establish a Agriculture Finance Support Facility (AFSF) to support financial institutions in Africa and Asia in their efforts to enter and/or expand rural financial markets. Recruitment for several positions is underway. For those interested, the job descriptions and instructions how to apply will be posted on the in the "What's On?" and "In the Spotlight" sections on the homepage. You can also view the description by clicking here.

Thanks and best regards,
The RFLC Editorial Team