John Ssali is currently an Advisor to Financial Access Consulting Services B.V. (“FA”) and is based in Kampala, Uganda. His main focus is in value chain mapping, research and training. With over to 14 years of Agricultural finance sector experience, he worked for Centenary Bank in various roles as an Agricultural Credit Officer, Commercial Loans Officer and Senior Credit Analyst and at Pride Microfinance (MDI) as Manager Credit Agricultural Lending. He started the Agricultural lending unit, developed an Agricultural lending manual, brought on board several development partners and managed the quality growth of the Agricultural loan book.He joined Financial Access under the F4A programme which was designed and developed to bridge the gap between financial institutions and the agricultural sector. The aim was to increase agricultural finance to MSME agri-businesses and to agricultural producer organizations. Heworked as a Manager, Agrifinance Solutions for Financial Access (East Africa) Ltd during which time he executed various capacity building projects for various financial institutions in Uganda, Kenya, Rwanda, Malawi, Zambia and South Sudan. The activities included Agribusiness Strategy Development, Agriculture Value Chain Studies, Agriculture Loan Product Development, Training for financial institutions based on their training needs.Mr. Ssali John holds a bachelor’s degree in Agriculture (Economics) from Makerere University, Kampala, a Certificate in Agricultural Finance from Kenya School of Monetary Studies and a Certificate from School of Applied Microfinance Kenya.