One Acre Fund is the recipient of the Financial Times Sustainable Banking Award for Achievement in Basic Needs Financing! The Award for Achievement in Basic Needs Financing recognizes groundbreaking transactions, programs, and initiatives that use the power of finance to address the scarcity of essential goods—including food, water, and energy—across society.

One Acre Fund is honored to receive the basic needs financing award, which is a tremendous validation from some of the preeminent thought leaders in the banking world. The FT and IFC awards attracted 156 entries from 110 institutions across 44 countries.

One Acre Fund’s work was also recently featured in a Financial Times article on food and microfinance. The article examines the importance not only of basic financial services for smalllholders, but of risk management tools such as crop insurance. “Linking financial services to access to weather insurance could help, as this will reduce farmers’ risks and at the same time reduce the probability of defaulting on a loan,” says Maximo Torero, the director of the markets, trade, and institutions division at the International Food Policy Research Institute. One Acre Fund bundles crop insurance with all the loans it disburses to farmers. To read more about the innovative weather-indexed crop insurance product we use in Kenya, see this post on the One Acre Fund blog.