 Ladies and gentlemen, addressing the estimated $42 billion financing gap for small-holder farmers in Sub-Sahara Africa will require game-changing solutions. Mobile-based service platforms and digital farm technology, including sensors, satellite images and drones, help reduce information gaps, promote access to the formal system and provide tools to better match risks. Service management is particularly critical for small-holder farmers. For example, the worst plague of desert locusts in the last 70 years hit East Africa in 2020. The agri-film program supported eradication efforts by mapping locust swarms in real-time using satellite and field-level data. It also worked with insurance providers, including Pula and Acre Africa, to leverage this data to deliver insurance and first-laws facilities. This further protected farmers against climate-related risks of desert locusts. Technology-based solutions have grown in importance since the COVID-19 pandemic. Similarly, to 2008 global economic crisis, agriculture is serving as a buffer for low-income households according to recent World Bank data. But there has been an increase in households moving toward agriculture since the start of the pandemic. Farmers faced declines in revenue due to market closures, reduced demand and value-chained interruptions. This means more erratic income flows, greater vulnerability and heightened financial stress. While technology offers new opportunities and support farmers with the financial tools they need, further investments are needed to turn the promise of these solutions into scale. Today, there are many agriculture finance pilots with limited reach and scale across Africa. It is key to prioritize policies to scale them sustainably. This includes implementing adequate operational and financial incentives across stakeholders who manage these pilots. This also means reviewing pricing schemes to achieve sustainability once donor funding ends. Stakeholders must dedicate adequate technical, financial and human resources to such pilots to ensure that commitments are translated to on-the-ground implementation. COVID-19 has underscored the importance of ensuring that digital public goods enhance financial inclusion for small-holder farmers. This includes expanded digital identification, extended affordable telecommunication connectivity to the last mile and financial sector regulations supportive of digital financial services. When these key prerequisites are in place, governments and the private sector can rapidly mobilize to provide farmers with the financial tools to withstand shocks. Governments should act swiftly to invest and build these key prerequisites as well as address enabling environment issues. Now is the time to prioritize the financial and digital inclusion for female small-holder farmers. Women produce nearly 70% of Africa's food, yet they are disproportionately affected by unequal access to markets, inputs, finance and land. The pandemic has only intensified these inequalities. Those must target women's small holders and address their specific constraints. When introduced safely and responsibly, technology can make a real difference. Leveraging data from cell phones and digital platforms helps facilitate access to credit for women. And this is important because many of them lack assets such as land that are really needed for collateral against loans. There is a need to invest in proven interventions that can scale quickly. For example, the Agrifin program has supported the digitization of saving groups in Tanzania through the Chomoka program. This intervention has made saving groups more efficient and trustworthy, and members are reporting the improvements in livelihood outcomes and overall well-being. Technology also plays a key role in promoted climate smart agriculture, or CSA. 25% of crops in lower-income countries grown by small-scale farmers are projected to fail because of climate change. CSA requires product and service innovation along with tremendous behavioral change across the agricultural sector. Governments can encourage emerging CSA solutions through policies such as tax relief, supporting social enterprises, introducing smart subsidies so farmers adopt new practices, and agile private-public partnerships to unlock financing barriers to support CSA interventions. Mercy Corps' work to serve more than 16 million farmers in eight countries over the past six years is impressive. This program is at the heart of the digital transformation necessary to achieve improved well-being outcomes for vulnerable farmers, particularly women. Further, Mercy Corps' recent research helps us to know what really, really works. It should be disseminated widely, including among government counterparts. I encourage participants to use this week to gain insights and renew commitments backed by financial and technical resources to accelerate progress. Collaboration is key to achieve a future for small-holder farmers that is inclusive, tech-driven, climate-smart and sustainable. Thank you.