Using Digital Finance to Promote Women’s Economic Empowerment in Agriculture
Event Information
Digital financial services have the potential to positively affect women’s economic empowerment, despite limitations that restrict their access to and use of financial resources and services. Building on the Digital Finance and Women’s Economic Empowerment in Beyond Production Roles in Agriculture and Food Systems report published by the Feed the Future Advancing Women’s Empowerment Program, this webinar will invite participants to learn about promoting women’s economic empowerment in agriculture using digital financial services.
Presenters will share out the findings, conclusions, and recommendations from the report, highlighting through a fireside chat the lessons learned and best practices from implementers and service providers working in the DFS space, and provide time for participants to pose questions to the presenters.
Speakers
Caroline Averch
Technical Director Financial Services
FHI 360
Caroline Averch is a development finance and economic growth specialist with 25 years of experience providing technical assistance and oversight to financial services, enterprise development, and competitiveness projects worldwide. She has expertise in micro, small and medium (MSME) development and finance, value chain finance, commercial bank downscaling, credit guarantees, financial sector reform and capacity building, and digital financial services. At FHI 360, Caroline leads the Economic Participation and Environment Department’s Inclusion Practice, overseeing financial inclusion, digital inclusion, livelihoods, and economic empowerment initiatives for women, youth and other marginalized groups. Ms. Averch holds an M.A. in International Development and Business from George Washington University.
Patrick Sampao
Chief Product Officer
Shamba Pride
Patrick Sampao is a Digital Product Manager with combined 10 years of experience in Agritech, insuretech and Mobile Technology sectors. Patrick currently serves as the Chief Product Officer at Shamba Pride, an Agritech start up where he is engaged in designing and digitizing last mile supply chain systems to enable distribution of hybrid inputs to smallholder farmers. He is also a Digital Product consultant at ACRE Africa where he played a role in transitioning the crop insurance product from a freemium model to enabling mobile money based premium collection ecosystem. Most recently he oversaw the setting up and implementation of Blockchain based crop insurance at ACRE Africa.
Emmanuel Dormon
Senior Director
ACDI/VOCA
Emmanuel Dormon is an agricultural economist with over 20 years’ experience. His interest is in promoting agribusiness through strengthening public-private partnership models aimed at enhancing smallholder farmers’ access to formal markets. Emmanuel is currently the Senior Director, Monitoring, Evaluation, Reporting and Learning at ACDI/VOCA’s Home Office and until 2019, he was the COP for the USAID funded FTF ADVANCE II project in Ghana. Emmanuel holds a PhD and MSc both from the Wageningen University and Research Centre in The Netherlands, with specializations in managing agricultural knowledge systems that are tailored to be especially beneficial to smallholder farmers.
Related Resources
Webinar Recording
Q&A Log
Presentation Chat Transcript
Webinar Presentation Slide Deck
