A €16 million ($17.4 million) joint funding facility backed by France and Uganda’s Pearl Bank Limited has reached more than 170,000 smallholder farmers and rural enterprises, boosting credit access in a bid to scale up the East African nation’s agricultural output.
The program comprising a €15 million (60 billion Ugandan shillings) concessional credit line and an additional €1 million in technical assistance is deployed via Agence Française de Développement (AFD). The facility targets micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs), smallholder farmers, and Savings and Credit Co-operative Societies (SACCOs). This deployment follows a structural agreement finalized late last year between the French development agency and Pearl Bank, a state-owned commercial lender formerly known as PostBank Uganda.
A high-level delegation led by French Ambassador to Uganda Virginie Leroy and AFD Country Director Marc Trouyet visited key agricultural beneficiaries in the western hub of Mbarara this week to review the facility’s capital deployment.
Among the primary channels for the funds are rural financial cooperatives, including Ebo Co-operative Savings, which serves 120,000 beneficiaries; Kyamuhunga Peoples’ Co-Operation, with 13,000; and Rwanyamahembe SACCO, which counts 12,000 members.
“Agriculture continues to play a central role in the growth of our economy it employs over 70% of our population who are directly or indirectly involved,” said George Williams Walusansa, Head of Financial Institutions and Social Enterprises at Pearl Bank, during an engagement with Rwanyamahembe cooperative members. “With the right financing, we can create a great impact and complement the government’s effort to grow the economy.”
The agricultural credit push lines up with Kampala’s aggressive macroeconomic blueprint, known as the Tenfold Growth Strategy. The ambitious long-term policy aims to expand Uganda’s gross domestic product from roughly $50 billion to $500 billion by 2040, relying heavily on a structural pivot toward agro-industrialization, mineral development, tourism, and technology.
For France, the credit facility represents a strategic bet on rural financial inclusion and supply-chain stability in East Africa.
“Through this initiative, France is investing in Uganda’s farmers, cooperatives, and rural entrepreneurs who are the driving forces behind the country’s agricultural sector,” Ambassador Leroy said, noting the progress logged since the credit deployment frameworks were initiated.
Development officials say the targeted credit structures demonstrate how localized micro-financing can bypass traditional banking bottlenecks to unlock productivity in emerging markets.
“Once there is access to the appropriate financing, we can unlock new energy and investment across Uganda’s agribusiness sector from smallholder farmers and SACCOs, to women and youth,” said Marc Trouyet, AFD’s Country Director for Uganda.
Pearl Bank plans to use the ongoing technical assistance component of the French package to roll out additional specialised, low-interest credit lines tailored for smallholders. The ultimate goal, according to bank officials, is to transition regional farmers from subsistence agriculture into higher-margin food processing, securing domestic food security while expanding agricultural exports to lucrative regional African markets.
