CARE Somalia and CARE Denmark, with support from DANIDA, established the SAMIR Fund – a revolving blended finance facility designed to help marginalised groups in Somalia, such as smallholder farmers, internally displaced persons, women, and youth adopt climate-smart irrigation technologies. By combining loans, guarantees and grants, the SAMIR Fund enables underserved communities in fragile regions of the country access finance from private institutions and invest in resilient agricultural practices, thus strengthening their livelihoods.
Scaling Community‑Led Finance for Climate‑Resilient Agriculture
Abstract
Somalia has been affected by decades of conflict, state fragility, recurrent climate shocks and disease outbreaks. These pressures have eroded institutions, weakened infrastructure and left large segments of the population excluded from both markets and basic services. In the northern region of Sanaag, internally displaced persons, pastoralists who have lost their herds, and marginalised women face extreme vulnerability. Climate-smart agricultural technologies such as drip irrigation and solar-powered water systems could support adaptation, but the high upfront investment costs are prohibitive in an environment where formal credit is scarce and private financial institutions are reluctant to lend.
In response, CARE Somalia and CARE Denmark, with support from DANIDA, piloted the Community-Led Innovative Solutions for Building Resilience (COLISBR) project to identify new pathways for inclusive adaptation finance. The initiative aimed at supporting farmers in accessing irrigation innovations to buttress food production all year round. The initiative started by installing drip irrigation systems and establishing water infrastructure to demonstrate how the innovation can be used. This led to more smallholder farmers enquiring on how they could access the technology despite their inability to pay the upfront cost. To address the challenge of the initial investment, CARE and partners established the Sanaag Agriculture, Markets, and Innovation for Resilience Fund (SAMIR Fund) in 2025, a revolving loan facility designed to unlock access to finance for climate-resilient technologies for vulnerable communities. By partnering with the private Micro Dahab Bank and embedding the mechanism in community financial structures, the Fund directly tackles structural barriers to finance in a fragile setting.
Through the SAMIR Fund, CARE and other development partners work with local stakeholders to catalyse more private investments into supporting farmers’ access to climate smart innovation, thus building their resilience. This is achieved through blending concessional elements with market-based lending. Grants and credit guarantees are used to de-risk loans from a private bank, while the revolving structure ensures that repayments can be recycled to reach additional farmers. This design lowers the initial cost barrier of installing drip irrigation systems and allows smallholder farmers to diversify their incomes through resilient agricultural practices.
CARE’s role has been central: beyond initiating the mechanism, it anchors the fund in existing community-based financial organisations, such as village savings and loan associations and cooperatives, which are more trusted and accessible for rural populations. At the same time, CARE supports the creation of new producers’ and traders’ cooperatives, with an emphasis on those led by women and youth, to expand outreach and include marginalised groups. The organisation also provides training on financial literacy, record-keeping and small enterprise management. These skills are essential for beneficiaries to build credit histories and graduate towards formal financial inclusion.
Partnerships have been critical. CARE acts as a bridge between informal community institutions and formal financial actors such as the Micro Dahab Bank. This role of “financial intermediation” is particularly relevant in fragile contexts, where private banks are reluctant to engage directly with high-risk populations but are willing to extend credit when CSOs assume part of the de-risking function. In parallel, technical training supports farmers to adopt climate-smart practices, ensuring that financing is coupled with the capacity to generate sustainable returns.
Although the SAMIR Fund has so far only been implemented in one region, Care Somalia plans to scale the Fund to other regions of Somalia.
Although still in early stages, the SAMIR Fund has already allowed marginalised farmers to access finance for investment in drip irrigation systems that would otherwise have been out of reach. These investments have improved food security and incomes, while reducing the risk of resource-based conflict by easing pressure on scarce water sources. The revolving nature of the fund means that repayments can be reinvested, creating a sustainable financing loop that extends benefits to a wider pool of households over time.
The initiative also demonstrates the broader value of CSOs in blended finance. CARE is not only providing grants or service delivery but is actively structuring financial mechanisms that allow access to private capital, thus building trust among communities and convening an ecosystem of actors around innovative instruments. This highlights the intermediary role of CSOs as connectors between vulnerable groups and financial markets, and as innovators capable of piloting solutions that larger financial institutions may later scale.
In fragile and climate-affected contexts, where both public and private capital are reluctant to engage, such catalytic roles are vital. The SAMIR Fund shows that revolving blended mechanisms can be designed to fit local realities and still achieve financial sustainability. It offers lessons for replication in other fragile settings: the importance of embedding finance within community structures, coupling finance with training and inclusion measures, and leveraging CSOs as both capacity builders and de-risking partners.
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