IFC invests in Kifiya: the AI helping farmers get loans without collateral

The International Finance Corporation (IFC), the World Bank Group's private-sector arm, has signed its first investment agreement with Ethiopian financial technology company Kifiya Financial Technology.

The announcement was made on Wednesday, November 4, 2026, at the Africa Financial Summit (AFIS) in Luanda, Angola. The investment aims to expand access to finance for smallholder farmers and underserved businesses, first in Ethiopia and later in other African countries.

Kifiya uses artificial intelligence (AI) and alternative data to assess people who want loans but have no credit history, formal records or collateral. Its system analyses more than 42 data families and over 10 billion alternative data signals — such as mobile-money transactions and business activity — to build a borrower risk profile, generate credit scores and detect fraud.

According to the company, its infrastructure has supported more than US$1 billion in credit in Ethiopia, assessed over five million loan applications, and enabled more than 1.1 million small businesses and smallholder farmers to access financing and insurance.

Kifiya works with nine financial institutions in Ethiopia, including six commercial banks, connecting borrowers and lenders through agents and rural cooperatives.

The investment builds on a 2025 partnership between IFC and Kifiya that set out to digitally profile one million Ethiopian farmers. So far, more than 1.2 million farmers have been enrolled.

"Farmers and microenterprises already produce, trade and create value, but much of that activity remains unseen by formal finance," said Munir Duri, founder and chief executive officer of Kifiya.

Ethiopis Tafara, IFC Vice President for Africa, said the investment would help bring financing within reach of more farmers and entrepreneurs, enabling them to invest, create jobs and strengthen their livelihoods.

Beyond Ethiopia, Kifiya is holding expansion talks in Rwanda, Uganda, Tanzania and Kenya. The company runs technology hubs in Nairobi and Cape Town, and plans to bundle several services — financing, insurance, farm inputs, mechanisation and market access — under a single farmer profile.

IFC's 2026 report, "Cracking the Credit Code", features Kifiya as a case study of how alternative data can reach informal businesses and first-time borrowers.

What does this mean for you?

If you run a farm or a small business and have no collateral or bank credit history, this is good news — but it is news for tomorrow, not today. Kifiya has not started operating in Tanzania yet; expansion talks are still under way.

Still, the direction is clear: your mobile-money records and business transactions could become your "credit history" in the future. Keeping your transactions digital and repaying small loans on time could help you qualify for bigger loans later.

And remember: AI makes getting a loan easier, but a loan is still a debt — it must be repaid. Before taking any loan, make sure you have a plan for how you will pay it back.