Financing Sustainable Agriculture in Sub-Saharan Africa: A Review of the Role of Financial Technologies
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Referee report for: Financing sustainable agriculture in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA): A review of the role of financial technologies
In summary, this is a high-quality review article. It centered on sustainable agriculture finance in sub-Saharan Africa. The paper provides a concise summary of the relevant papers and is organized with a thorough and comprehensible structure. Specifically, the writers condensed the article review into three essential questions. 1) Which digital financial technologies are being accessed and utilized by smallholder farmers in SSA? 2) How does FinTech help finance sustainable agriculture in SSA? 3) What opportunities can the public and private companies in SSA leverage to promote climate-smart farming through FinTech? They provided thorough and methodical answers. In addition, the paper's contribution is significant since it highlights the significant role that FinTech may play in funding the sustainability of smallholder agriculture in SSA. In addition, the deployment of financial services such as credit, savings, digital payment systems, and microinsurance was explored. The paper's study and conclusion might encourage researchers to perform further studies in this area, which would improve the field of sustainable agriculture in practice. The paper's objective and contribution are within the scope of the Journal of Sustainability. In light of the paper's quality, it is suggested that it be published in the Journal of Sustainability.
Author Response
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Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
The review article gives an interesting take on the role of new-age FinTech companies in the smart agriculture of the SSA region. There are some of the observations:
1. In the abstract, the authors mention gaps in the urban and rural regions. Please reflect the same in the manuscript. Some graphs will be of great help.
2. Kindly prepare a flow chart for the ‘Materials and Methods’ section. This should include all the resources mentioned in the ‘Data Collection’ subsection. This should be done for all three research questions.
3. Please comment on the criteria on which the countries are selected in Table 1.
4. Please make a table for the ‘Results’ section. This should include the domain and year of publication and the primary findings in it.
5. Figures 2 and 3 show the decrease in cash payments; it would be nice to see a graph on the increase of Fintech with respect to the GDP growth. The authors are asked to study topics on world bank like: ‘https://www.worldbank.org/en/country/centralafricanrepublic/publication/the-central-african-republic-economic-update-explained-in-5-charts’. Public debt is also increasing; these may be the cause of the decrease in cash payments and not the increase in the FinTech industry. Also, please include research like 'https://doi.org/10.3390/su15010481' and 'https://doi.org/10.3390/su142215249' to make the article more robust.
Overall, the review article is an interesting take on the role of Fintech in agriculture. The authors are asked to update the manuscript based on the comments above for its possible publication.
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
Abstract should be revised thoroughly as it was merely definition of Fin-Tech, nothing mentioned from Research and results in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA).
Page 2, question 2 on "How does Fintech help finance sustainable….." is very subjective, how can you reach conclusion by a Review study?
How did you choose and build up a conceptual framework on Fin-Tech dimension on page 4:
• “Fin-Tech and agriculture”
• “Financial services and agriculture”
• “Digital agriculture”
• “Digital credit and agriculture”
• “Digital savings and agriculture”
• “Digital payments and agriculture”
• “Insurance and agriculture”
What would be the above dimensions potential theoretical and practical contribution to the sustainability in SSA before selecting them?
The article lacks a background how Fin-Tech areas can contribute and lead to the Sustainable agriculture in SSA.
On page 9, the question 4.3 it was inappropriate and answer was not clear.
The results on each part of Fin-Tech, from page 5-10 were forged to look relevant and proper which were not.
This conceptual paper should include and focus on new relationship among Fin-Tech constructs. The objective of study should be to develop logical and complete arguments about Fin-Tech associations. The logical development in this study was missed.
In conclusion, authors should restate the logical argument about Fin-Tech constructs which have been developed through the body of study.
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 4 Report
Dear Sirs,
Thank you in advance for this additional opportunity to review an article in such an illustrious scientific journal. Well, the article reviewed was also a learning experience because the paper makes the connection between the technologies of the financial context at the service of the development of sub-Saharan African agriculture. Today, FinTech has become a contributing factor to success both in terms of productivity and sustainability in the agricultural sector. In this sense, the paper under review presents a series of very valid arguments on these issues where the ideas are well structured and organised. The arguments produced and presented are based on recent authors which increases the present and future usefulness of the article under analysis. On the other hand, we appreciate the research questions right after the general presentation of the topic, and we were also presented with a conceptual model on sustainable financing of agriculture through FinTechs.
Although the conceptual model is adapted, we perceived an attempt to systematise it in the sense of understanding the subject in holistic terms, which reveals an interesting capacity to understand the reality of the natural, human, social, physical and financial ecosystems related to the rural world from a financial perspective. From an empirical point of view, the article presents interesting findings such as the financial technologies used by smallholder farmers, categorises financial products and services, and presents data on the opportunities that exist in the field of digital financial services. FinTechs offer African countries a great opportunity for economic development capable of promoting sustainable agriculture finance.
Kind regards.
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
