Agricultural Finance, Value Chains and Climate Resilience among Rural Women Farmers in Tanzania: An Integrative Review
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.65336/WJEBM.2026.31103Keywords:
rural women, agricultural finance, value chains, climate resilience, village savings and loan associations, warehouse receipt system, Tanzania, integrative reviewAbstract
Women supply a large share of Tanzania's agricultural labour, yet they remain underrepresented in agricultural lending, commercial value chains and risk-transfer markets. As droughts and erratic rainfall intensify, access to finance increasingly determines whether rural women can invest in adaptation or are pushed further into vulnerability. The review integrates empirical, theoretical and grey literature on rural women farmers' access to and benefits from agricultural finance and value-chain interventions in Tanzania, with particular attention to climate variability. An integrative review following Whittemore and Knafl's five-stage framework was used. Peer-reviewed articles, working papers, national survey reports and programme documents published between 2013 and 2026 were identified through web-based scholarly searching, repository searching and citation chasing. Quality was appraised with the Mixed Methods Appraisal Tool (MMAT) and an adapted AACODS checklist for grey literature. Data were synthesised through constant comparison and thematic analysis. The evidence favours bundled, group-anchored approaches that combine savings, training and collective marketing with measures that put documents, land rights and decision-making power in women's own hands. It is recommended that rigorous, gender-disaggregated impact evaluations of warehouse receipts, insurance and digital credit remain the most pressing research gap.
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