Addressing Agriculture Market Dysfunctions through Blended Finance with a Gender Lens

This brief provides an overview of “Investing in Women,” an initiative of the Australian Government. The paper summarises learnings from the program to build the case for using a ‘Capital Plus’ model of blended finance to spur growth in agribusinesses that improve competitiveness and resilience of the sector in developing countries. It covers several practical examples of how development practitioners can structure blended finance models, in partnership with investors, to address supply-side constraints of capital, while also providing technical assistance for specific outcomes. Highlighting business models across the agriculture value-chain, the paper establishes how intentional gender lens mandates in development programming can fuel the potential of women as leaders of innovative agribusinesses.