Agricultural Financial Inclusiveness for Smallholder Farming Communities in Colombia

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Finamiga is a Colombian microfinance institution with six years of experience that promotes financial inclusion through six types of financial products, including micro-loans for small and medium agricultural producers to acquire inputs, fertilizers, and farming machinery to boost their production. They currently operate in five Colombian departments and employ 120 people.

In May 2020 the organization requested a F2F volunteer to help them improve their use of technology to capture, manage and analyze their client data. The chosen volunteer for this assignment was Jacob Shiman, who holds a BA in Political Science and Government and an MSc in Global Affairs focused on the role of finance in development. He is passionate about financial inclusion for small businesses in the developing world and has worked in financial sector development, microfinance and fintech.

Jacob began working remotely with Finamiga in June of 2020 and met frequently with Finamiga’s Director and COO until January 2021. He was granted access to their technological system and conducted research on other social platforms that the host could use to better organize its information. He analyzed what Finamiga currently reports on its dashboard and annual report, versus the metrics that international funders prefer to track. With this in mind, Jacob suggested 19 variables that they should track to improve their current measurements.


After analyzing Finamiga’s social impact and recommending improvements to its reporting, Jacob presented a complete diagnosis of the host’s current use of technology for client management and an improvement plan. This will leave Finamiga better equipped to measure its social performance, make better-informed decisions, and improve how they assess and target their clients. By strengthening microfinance institutions focused on serving smallholder farmers, the Farmer-to-Farmer program helps marginalized populations in Colombia improve their businesses, incomes, and livelihoods.

The host was very impressed with Jacob and the assignment: “Thanks to the support of the Farmer-to-Farmer program and volunteer Jacob Shiman, we were able to analyze new data regarding our poverty outreach indicators. We worked for almost five months with Jacob in reevaluating and strengthening our Poverty Probability Index (PPI) measurements. The insights obtained through his research have given us a broader perspective regarding the impact our microcredits have on our clients and important tools to appraise new products in the nearby future. This information will certainly help Finamiga to develop new strategies to strengthen our client’s well-being and reduce their poverty risks. Needless to say, Jacob’s commitment and professionalism towards delivering a high-quality investigation exceeded, by far, our expectations.”

-Sebastian Ayalde, Director of Social Development at Finamiga UNI2

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