Investing in Rural Agriculture in the Face of Innovative Financial Services: Does Financial Literacy Matter in Nigeria?

The complex nature of formal financial products and services and the frequently associated innovations occasioned by disruptive technologies inform researchers’ calls for studies on financial literacy, particularly in African rural communities. As a response to the calls, this study explores how financial literacy relates to performance, access to credit facilities, and payment preferences among smallholder rural farmers in Nigeria. Further, the rural farmers’ financial literacy level on each of the four dimensions of the Standard and Poor Global Financial Literacy criteria was assessed. A random sample was drawn from the registered rural farmers in the Central Bank of Nigeria’s Anchored Borrower’s Program for the 2022 farming year. Quantitative data were collected from rural farmers using the Standard and Poor Global Financial Literacy questionnaire. The proposed hypotheses were tested with partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM), while descriptive statistics were used to analyze the data. The outcomes show that financial literacy significantly predicts performance, access to credit facilities, and mode of payment preferences among smallholder rural farmers. Also, the analyses of the four dimensions of financial literacy show that the farmers are more literate in risk diversification and inflation than numeracy and compound interest. It is concluded that financial literacy is cardinal to profitable investments in rural farming, and as such, there is a need for the Nigerian government and financial authorities to embark on financial literacy drive with more emphasis on numeracy and compound interest where the rural farmers are more deficient.