AGRA, the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, intends to strengthen access for Ivorian women entrepreneurs to financing and commercialization opportunities in the agribusiness sector. Thus, the organization will proceed on 14 October in Abidjan with the launch of its VALUE4HER program.
An initiative that aims to strengthen women-led agribusinesses by facilitating their access to financing and markets, and by promoting their integration into continental agricultural value chains. This event is expected to allow Ivorian agripreneurs to discover VALUE4HERConnect, the continental platform that connects more than 17 000 women-led businesses in 48 African countries.
The ambition is to offer them new commercial perspectives, facilitate their access to financing, and strengthen their entrepreneurial capacities. AGRA intends to mobilize financial institutions, development partners, and buyers around concrete solutions to remove the obstacles that hinder the expansion of women-led agribusinesses in Côte d'Ivoire.
This initiative comes at a time when women occupy a significant place in Ivorian agriculture and food security, while remaining faced with difficulties in accessing the resources necessary for the development of their activities. According to AGRA, women represent approximately 67% of the agricultural workforce and nearly 75% of food crop production.
They are involved in particular in the production, processing, and marketing of products such as cassava and consequently attiéké, rice, plantains, vegetables, and fish. Despite this contribution, the businesses they lead still encounter difficulties in accessing land, inputs, adapted financing, and reliable markets.
These constraints limit their ability to invest, increase their production volumes, and furthermore develop processing activities on a larger scale. Post-harvest losses can reach 40%.
In this context, improving access to commercial outlets and financial resources constitutes a challenge to strengthening the viability of agricultural and agribusiness enterprises led by women. VALUE4HER thus intends to contribute to addressing these challenges by facilitating connections between entrepreneurs, financiers, and market players.
A founding cohort of at least 100 agripreneurs. These registrations will allow local businesses to be linked to this pan-African network and give them access to the possibilities offered by the platform.
The event will bring together around a hundred participants from different segments of the agribusiness ecosystem, including leaders of PME, cooperatives, women's networks, financial institutions, public bodies, development partners, and buyers. A high-level panel, dedicated to the financing and market access of women-led agribusinesses, will also make it possible to identify the conditions necessary for the implementation of the program in the field.
Discussions will focus in particular on adapted financial products, marketing channels, support for entrepreneurs, and ways to facilitate their participation in the platform. The stated objective is to move beyond awareness-raising to elicit concrete commitments from the participants present, particularly regarding financing, guarantees, technical assistance, and procurement.
WAYA and "100 for 1 Million" also on the agenda. The launch of VALUE4HER in Côte d'Ivoire will be accompanied by the presentation of two other initiatives intended to support women in agricultural value chains.
The first, WAYA, corresponds to the prizes awarded by AGRA to the most successful agripreneurs of the year. The meeting is intended to help publicize this initiative among Ivorian entrepreneurs and to mobilize potential candidates for the 2027 edition.
The second initiative, titled "100 for 1 Million", is spearheaded by AGRA in partnership with Delta40 and Heifer International. It aims to support 100 flagship women-led agribusinesses, 10 000 PME women, and one million smallholder women farmers.
A working session with women leaders in the agribusiness sector is planned in order to present the objectives of this initiative, gather their expectations, and prepare its deployment in Côte d'Ivoire. The presentation of this program occurs in 2026, a year proclaimed by the United Nations as the International Year of the Woman Farmer.
It also coincides with the twentieth anniversary of AGRA, which has initiated a six-month campaign including the deployment of VALUE4HER in Côte d'