This guide is intended to provide tools and references to help practitioners—people who design, implement and support value chain development and agricultural finance programs—assess the financial products, strategic alliances and methodologies that can facilitate financing for investment in value chains. The approach builds on the value chain analytical framework to identify and prioritize specific upgrades that enable value chain actors to benefit from market opportunities, and then focus on the financing that is required to achieve those upgrades. The objective is not to expand financial services as an end in itself, but to expand those financial services most critical to the growth and competitiveness of selected value chains. The activities in this guide assume that value chains have already been selected and analyzed, and that their most promising market opportunities have been identified.