in January and February our team conducted the third and final round of qualitative reserach in Laos and Cambodia. Here are our early insights.

We are pleased to launch the DiFF Project Report for Year 3 of our 5-year project. This report provides more detail on our Year Three activities and outlines our plans for Years Four and Five.

How does gender affect the use of digital financial services among smallholder farmers in Cambodia? In this post we report on recent research findings.

Today we are pleased to announce the release of our first DiFF Project Report (Year 2, 2023-2024). In this report we provide details about our findings, and present a road map for the remainder of the project. We look forward to hearing your thoughts and ideas!

The DiFF team is pleased to announce the release of a report, The Financial Ecosystem for Smallholder Farming Households in Lao PDR. The report maps the financial ecosystem for smallholder farmers in Laos and makes recommendations for stakeholders to develop the ecosystem while mitigating risks.

On Wednesday, 1 November, the DiFF team held a workshop at the Crowne Plaza in Vientiane to present the initial results of our exercise to map financial inlcusion stakeholders in Laos. Here we present the group discussion on the state of digital financial services in Laos and how the results of our work might be used.

Between mid-October to mid-November, we did the first round of qualitative fieldwork in Laos to begin collecting data and exploring questions regarding discernible impacts of digital financial services on smallholder farmers. In this post we reflect on our process and initial observations.

From 23-27 January 2023, members of the DiFF project team gathered for a workshop in Luang Prabang, Laos, to discuss the project objectives, concepts, research activities and methods, research questions and research planning for the immediate future and also for the next five years.

What’s a project without in-person meetings to clarify goals and build the team? This month, Dr. Isaac Lyne (WSU) and myself headed to Phnom Penh and Vientiane along with Dr. Todd Sanderson (ACIAR) to meet with our in-country project teams.

We’re pleased to welcome you to Digital Finance and Farming (DiFF), a 5-year project investigating the impact of digital financial serivces on farming households and women.