The study was designed to analyse the impact of Agriculture Value Chain Financing on Livelihoods of Smallholder Farmers in rural Rwanda. The objective was to explore different strategies, models, instruments and tools which can help small scale farmers in improving access to finance for commercially-oriented investments in agriculture sector. The case study was conducted at the rice cooperative “COOPRIKI-CYUNUZI: Coopérative des Riziculteurs de Kibaya- Cyunuzi”, based in Gatore Sector, Kirehe District, Eastern Province, Rwanda. The cooperative was linked to inputs suppliers, FIs, rice foctoring plants and difeerent markets. The cooperative supplied rice paddy to differents rice milling companies, and worked with few Financial Institutions. It identified certain constraints that were faced by smallholder farmers in credit acquisition, and proposed alternative solutions to overcome those constraints. Both farmers and FIs expressed that farmers encountered constraints to access formal credit. COOPRIKI-CYUNUZI received both Government and Developement Agencies’s financial support in the form of grants and capacity building, as well as loans from few FIs. Farmers aknowledged that the financing received, though insufficient had impacted positively their lives’ standards. They expressed that by engaging them in rice production and working with FIs, resulted in increased access to health services, educational services for their children and enabled them to acquire new assets.
