Rural Finance - Insights from Three Continents

In recent years, an enormous growth in global agricultural markets has led to a renewed interest in rural and agricultural finance and innovative developments in this domain. What are these developments? What experiences exist throughout the world? And what can we learn from them in order to support a more sustainable rural and agricultural finance? This research paper tried to shed some light on these issues by presenting articles on specific experiences in terms of rural and agricultural finance from three continents: North Africa (Morocco), Central America (Nicaragua) and South Asia (Bangladesh). A recurring issue in all articles is the importance of social relations or social ties - accross value chains, in group of farmers anbd also between financial service providers and clients.