There has been a growing existence of informal financial institutions in both rural and urban areas of South Africa. The objective of this paper is to identify factors influencing the choice of informal financial service providers in the peri-urban areas of South Africa. Data from 193...

Inadequate infrastructure is a major development challenges in developing countries. This paper applies factor analysis to determine the pattern of access to rural service infrastructure on 158 farming households in the Limpopo Province. The nine components of access to service infrastructure...

While many studies have identified infrastructure as a constraints to production in agriculture in South Africa, few have attempted to investigate the extent to which emerging farmers are able to access and utilise infrastructure services. This paper uses data collected from 500 emerging farmers...

This South African Agricultural Public Expenditure Review (AgPer) is one of a series of similar studies undertaken in several countries in Sub-Saharan Africa under the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Program (CAADP) of the African Union’s (AU) New Partnership for Africa’s...

This South African Agricultural Public Expenditure Review (AgPer) is one of a series of similar studies undertaken in several countries in Sub-Saharan Africa under the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Program (CAADP) of the African Union's (AU) New Partnership for Africa's...

Rural financial intermediation faces several challenges, including, shortcomings and systematic weaknesses of rural financial markets, urban biased policies and poorly designed interventions not based on the realities of rural markets. Against this background the purpose of this chapter is to...

The paper aims to determine patterns used by emerging farmers to participate in the market economy. The eight components of participation (six crop sales, livestock sales and off-farm earnings) were subjected to factor analysis. The results indicate that there are five sources of market...

In South Africa a recent government study laid the foundations for improving access to financial services for rural people. More is however needed than simply stating the policies. It is argued that policies do not differentiate target groups adequately. This can result in inefficient...