The National Bank of Ethiopia, together with the Ministry of Agriculture, is pleased to launch the National Agri Finance Implementation Roadmap (NAFIR), 2025–2030.
The launch event was followed by an inaugural steering committee meeting, co-chaired by H.E. the Governor and H.E. the Minister, which approved the governance structure and the first annual work plan framework, kick-starting implementation.
NAFIR is a joint project of the NBE and the MoA, aiming to meaningfully scale up agri-finance. It builds on years of investment by the government, development partners, and the private sector, addressing the remaining constraints to scale-up through three game-changing pillars.
Under Pillar I of NAFIR, a National Agri-Finance Accelerator (NAFA) will be established to provide wholesale finance and credit guarantees to financial institutions, addressing constraints they face in loanable fund availability and the specific risks of financing agriculture.
Under Pillar II, a framework known as Farmer Access to Streamlined Financial Services (FAST) will be developed to support rapid loan approvals, reducing the long lead times and high costs that farmers often experience when engaging with the financial sector.
Under Pillar III, an Agri-Finance Centre of Excellence (CoE) will be introduced to put in place long-term multistakeholder coordination frameworks for delivering agri-finance-centred solutions at scale in the critical areas of financial and digital literacy, financial institution capacity-building, agricultural risk management, and institutional linkages.
NAFIR has been developed through a highly consultative process. It is positioned as a time-bound, catalytic intervention that builds long-term capacity for sustainable agri-financing—combining a digitalised, data-driven ecosystem with localised rural access for farmers and other agricultural stakeholders through the channels they trust.
Read NAFIR here: https://nbe.gov.et/nafir/
