Finthropology to conduct mobile finance scan in SEA for ACIAR
Finthropology is pleased to announce that we have been engaged by the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR) to conduct a market scan of mobile finance and market facilitation services in Southeast Asia. The scan will focus on services aimed at smallholder farmers in Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, the Philippines, East Timor and Indonesia.
The project will investigate both the kinds of services available and the role mobile they are playing in rural communities. The scan will inform ACIAR’s future decisions regarding research financing. Dr. Todd Sanderson, Research Manager for Economics and Policy at ACIAR, commented:
In many developing country contexts, we’ve had over 20 years of mobile supported market services, pitched at smallholders and fisherfolk. It is surprising that these services are not as ubiquitous in smallholder contexts as we might have expected. It is also clear we have a limited understanding of the broader impacts of those services on the development trajectories of smallholders. This work will be valuable for informing options for ACIAR to better support the development of smallholders through mobile market and financial service avenues.
The research will result in a report that will be publicly available in the second half of 2023.
About ACIAR
The Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR) is the Australian Government's specialist agricultural research-for-development agency. They contribute to reducing poverty and improving the livelihoods of many in the Indo-Pacific region through more productive and sustainable agriculture emerging from collaborative international research.
