-8-

women in a pilot scheme in The Gambia were successfully taught to use draft animals on their irrigated rice fields. Women's accesa to both animal traction and fertilizer, according to that research, is more limited and costly than men's (GARD 1988).

# (c) Lack of Credit and Inputs

1.21 Women are bypassed by formal credit systems for a number of reasons -- lack of collateral (usually land title); need for a male cosigner; lower levels of literacy, numeracy, and general education; lack of information; distance and cost of travel to credit institutions; and the small scale of many women's operations.

1.22 It is not so much that formal laws prohibit women obtaining credit, but rather that these factors discourage their access to it. Studies in countries as diverse as The Gambia (Shipton 1986) and Kenya (Maitha 1986) report that few women smallholders obtain credit from the formal lending institutions. Women represent only 7% in Sierra Leone and 6.3% in Malawi of recipients of seasonal loans. (IFAD 1985) Yet women are generally a better credit risk than men. Women have higher repayment rates than men, not only in Africa but throughout the world, as the examples of the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh and the Rural Farmer's Scheme in Uganda demonstrate.

1.23 Available credit is often limited to the production cycle (while |cse 7: **ZIIBAJE:** ,OBILIZING CREDIT women are often engaged in processing) **FOR f1L** M I **0MEI** and sometimes to export crops (which The Saviîiga Development Movement (SDM) women are less likely to grow). Over In zirbabwe. i8 a nongoverrunent, registered half of the women interviewed in Meru cooperative which -provides advisory, and Maranga areas in Kenya (World Bank supervisory, meteriat, and technical 1989) said "lack of cash" kept them from assistance to savings clube for over 200,000 women, msot of whosa are seLf-provisioning using more improved varieties of seeds, farmers. Groupa of women meet weekly. Each fertilizer and other inputs. Payment of member is expected to save a smatt amount. wage labor also requires cash, often at But many save more than the minimun. Many of a time when low-resource farmers are the clubs use their savings for butk purchase of inputs for maize- farming and for butk unlikely to have ready cash or access to marketing of output. The **SDN** atso provides credit. Farmers who cannot afford technicat packages for smatlhotders, adapted inputs and who cannot pay for hired to various agroclimatlc conditions. Once labor are boss likely ta be interested groups are wett-estabtished, they go on- to targer scaté activities such as producing in extension activities; likewise, cash crops on group plots (FAO 1984). extension agents are less likely to target this group because of their inability to respond to recommendations to purchase inputs and additional labor.

1.24 Without credit, women are less likely to be able to afford the inputs recommended by extension agents. This can, in turn, lessen their chances of having contact with extension agents. In the early days of the MIDENO project in the Cameroon, for example, extension agents made more visits to the farms of those who purchased inputs than to those who did not, and men were more likely than women to be purchasing inputs. (Koons 1989). This situation was corrected later in the project when women's groups were used as