Inventory Credit to Enhance Food Security in Afric

Résumé

In many African countries, rural households typically sell their crops immediately after the harvest, and then face severe food shortages during the lean season. This paper explores whether alleviating both credit and storage constraints through an inventory credit (orwarrantage) program in Burkina Faso is associated with improvements in household livelihood. We partnered with a rural bank and a nation-wide organization of farmers to evaluate a warrantage program in seventeen villages. In randomly chosen treatment villages, households were offered a loan in exchange for storing a portion of their harvest as a physical collateral in one of the newly-built warehouses of the program. The program has increased cultivated area in treated villages by 1.8 ha (+27%) per household (mainly cotton and maize), fertilizer use by 160kg (+27%), cattle by 1.5 head (+38%) and grain stock in the end of lean season (+60 kg of millet). Furthermore warrantage extended the self-subsistence period of participating households by an average of seventeen days, and increased dietary diversity significantly, with more fish, fruit and oil consumed weekly.