Credit and microcredit feature prominently in development activities and discourse as a tool to support rural small-scale producers to escape poverty, especially women. Research, however, has yielded mixed findings for development impacts, including limited and sometimes adverse outcomes. For small-scale aquaculture, there is a lack of research on credit impacts, and it is unclear to what degree existing knowledge of credit and micro-credit in other sectors is applicable. Thus it is important to better understand the role of credit in small-scale aquaculture to support growth and development, especially for women.
In rural Bolivia, lending for agricultural activities has grown significantly in recent years and has increasingly fallen under the purview of the government. Aquaculture, due to the success of small-scale producers, has become an explicit target of such loans, despite significant hesitancy only a few years ago because of uncertainty around collateral and reliable production. Women as well have become explicitly targeted for loans, including through communication and outreach tactics and low-interest rate loans only available to women. These lending vehicles have been viewed by lenders and government as highly successful, especially in regard to women’s financial empowerment in the rapidly growing aquaculture sector where they have a high degree of participation in production and markets. However, such success is based on very narrow metrics such as repayment rates and number of loans given, with the full picture of the social and economic impacts to women aquaculture producers remaining opaque.
This paper discusses the issues at the nexus of credit, women’s empowerment, and small-scale aquaculture livelihoods. It does so by presenting the findings of a survey conducted in March 2024 with 204 women aquaculture producers in the central region of Bolivia. The focus is on how women access and control loans as well as the barriers they face in acquiring loans, with particular attention to the mediating role of their aquaculture livelihood.
The paper contributes to a significant gap in micro-finance literature by focusing on women in aquaculture, a livelihood segment that is growing rapidly around the world but has been under-researched. It also contributes to improved understanding of the impacts of lending for aquaculture to reveal insights for more effective and equitable credit products and lending strategies, and thus support expansion of credit for aquaculture in other regions.