devinitorg/iati-policy-markers huggingface dataset:
Leading the Charge to Eradicate Rural Poverty Our prior project with the Dutch Government, “Subsistence to Self-Reliance – Bringing the Power of Markets to Africa’s Lowest-Income Farmers” underscored our shared passion for inclusive economic development and showcased the key milestones that we can accomplish together. Core operating support from DGIS facilitated the strategic expansion of One Acre Fund’s ‘impact ecosystem.’ Within two years, we doubled the scale of our farmer network, launched operations in two new country programs (Malawi and Uganda), and rolled out impactful new products like tree planting kits and clean cookstoves at country-wide scale. Simultaneously, we refined our innovative systems-change platform, leveraging our core organizational competencies to improve large-scale public and private actors’ service to smallholders. This success has now placed One Acre Fund in a position where we can realistically envision moving the needle on hunger and poverty across the entire African continent. Our current project with DGIS, “Leading the Charge to Eradicate Rural Poverty,” aims to capture this powerful opportunity. The project involves a smartly structured two-part investment spanning September 15, 2018 – December 31, 2022: First, DGIS is once again providing critical support to the varied, evolving platforms within our organization that lay the foundation for our growth and impact. Core operating support from DGIS will enhance and extend One Acre Fund’s proven model by funding key strategic priorities across our M&E, R&D, and new country expansion units. Secondly, DGIS is also providing working capital to revolutionize One Acre Fund’s growth trajectory. This injection to our ‘permanent fund’ will completely fund our projected expansion of 245,000+ new farm families in 2019, bringing us past the 1 millionth farmer milestone. Crucially, farmers’ loan repayments will replenish our permanent fund each year, allowing us to re-extend this contribution to provide input loans to an estimated 245,000 farm families (including over 980,000 children) annually. This project will anchor One Acre Fund’s expansion to directly serve 1.85 million farm families annually by year-end 2022. Simultaneously, it will help us reach an additional 3.5 million farmers via systems-change partnerships that are expressly designed to transform entire agricultural ecosystems. Together, the reach of these efforts will generate transformative change for rural communities across rural Africa. Our Rwanda program has established a 2030 vision that “our impact will be visible from every farmer’s home.” We are pursuing this vision by (1) helping farmers journey from food insecure to prosperous, (2) impacting all farmers through whole-market interventions, and (3) strengthening the country’s food systems. Improving the customer experience is foundational to these efforts. In 2022, we began trialing a new approach in Rwanda aimed at providing multiple access points to our services. The pilot is dubbed 'project Ubukwe' — a word which means 'marriage' in Kinyarwanda, and is based on the full integration of our core program and rural retail shops.
Leading the Charge to Eradicate Rural Poverty Our prior project with the Dutch Government, “Subsistence to Self-Reliance – Bringing the Power of Markets to Africa’s Lowest-Income Farmers” underscored our shared passion for inclusive economic development and showcased the key milestones that we can accomplish together. Core operating support from DGIS facilitated the strategic expansion of One Acre Fund’s ‘impact ecosystem.’ Within two years, we doubled the scale of our farmer network, launched operations in two new country programs (Malawi and Uganda), and rolled out impactful new products like tree planting kits and clean cookstoves at country-wide scale. Simultaneously, we refined our innovative systems-change platform, leveraging our core organizational competencies to improve large-scale public and private actors’ service to smallholders. This success has now placed One Acre Fund in a position where we can realistically envision moving the needle on hunger and poverty across the entire African continent. Our current project with DGIS, “Leading the Charge to Eradicate Rural Poverty,” aims to capture this powerful opportunity. The project involves a smartly structured two-part investment spanning September 15, 2018 – December 31, 2022: First, DGIS is once again providing critical support to the varied, evolving platforms within our organization that lay the foundation for our growth and impact. Core operating support from DGIS will enhance and extend One Acre Fund’s proven model by funding key strategic priorities across our M&E, R&D, and new country expansion units. Secondly, DGIS is also providing working capital to revolutionize One Acre Fund’s growth trajectory. This injection to our ‘permanent fund’ will completely fund our projected expansion of 245,000+ new farm families in 2019, bringing us past the 1 millionth farmer milestone. Crucially, farmers’ loan repayments will replenish our permanent fund each year, allowing us to re-extend this contribution to provide input loans to an estimated 245,000 farm families (including over 980,000 children) annually. This project will anchor One Acre Fund’s expansion to directly serve 1.85 million farm families annually by year-end 2022. Simultaneously, it will help us reach an additional 3.5 million farmers via systems-change partnerships that are expressly designed to transform entire agricultural ecosystems. Together, the reach of these efforts will generate transformative change for rural communities across rural Africa. Nigeria is our newest country of operation, and is already showing significant indicators of rapid growth and deep farmer impact. As a result, we plan to accelerate this growth over the next few years, with the goal of serving 1 million farmers by 2030 through all impact channels. We currently operate our traditional core program, a tree-planting platform, nascent rural retail channel, and crop buy-back trials.
Leading the Charge to Eradicate Rural Poverty Our prior project with the Dutch Government, “Subsistence to Self-Reliance – Bringing the Power of Markets to Africa’s Lowest-Income Farmers” underscored our shared passion for inclusive economic development and showcased the key milestones that we can accomplish together. Core operating support from DGIS facilitated the strategic expansion of One Acre Fund’s ‘impact ecosystem.’ Within two years, we doubled the scale of our farmer network, launched operations in two new country programs (Malawi and Uganda), and rolled out impactful new products like tree planting kits and clean cookstoves at country-wide scale. Simultaneously, we refined our innovative systems-change platform, leveraging our core organizational competencies to improve large-scale public and private actors’ service to smallholders. This success has now placed One Acre Fund in a position where we can realistically envision moving the needle on hunger and poverty across the entire African continent. Our current project with DGIS, “Leading the Charge to Eradicate Rural Poverty,” aims to capture this powerful opportunity. The project involves a smartly structured two-part investment spanning September 15, 2018 – December 31, 2022: First, DGIS is once again providing critical support to the varied, evolving platforms within our organization that lay the foundation for our growth and impact. Core operating support from DGIS will enhance and extend One Acre Fund’s proven model by funding key strategic priorities across our M&E, R&D, and new country expansion units. Secondly, DGIS is also providing working capital to revolutionize One Acre Fund’s growth trajectory. This injection to our ‘permanent fund’ will completely fund our projected expansion of 245,000+ new farm families in 2019, bringing us past the 1 millionth farmer milestone. Crucially, farmers’ loan repayments will replenish our permanent fund each year, allowing us to re-extend this contribution to provide input loans to an estimated 245,000 farm families (including over 980,000 children) annually. This project will anchor One Acre Fund’s expansion to directly serve 1.85 million farm families annually by year-end 2022. Simultaneously, it will help us reach an additional 3.5 million farmers via systems-change partnerships that are expressly designed to transform entire agricultural ecosystems. Together, the reach of these efforts will generate transformative change for rural communities across rural Africa. In 2021, One Acre Fund decided to pivot our core staple crop program in Uganda to refocus on higher-value cash crops (coffee and trees). This program offers powerful opportunities for the same demographic of smallholder farmers to earn higher farmer profits, build long-term assets, and climate resilience through tree-based crops. Our coffee program works by registering and mobilizing farmers into groups, conducting year-round farmer training/extension, marketing high-quality inputs, providing follow-up support via in-field visits, and connecting farmers to more lucrative markets.
Leading the Charge to Eradicate Rural Poverty Our prior project with the Dutch Government, “Subsistence to Self-Reliance – Bringing the Power of Markets to Africa’s Lowest-Income Farmers” underscored our shared passion for inclusive economic development and showcased the key milestones that we can accomplish together. Core operating support from DGIS facilitated the strategic expansion of One Acre Fund’s ‘impact ecosystem.’ Within two years, we doubled the scale of our farmer network, launched operations in two new country programs (Malawi and Uganda), and rolled out impactful new products like tree planting kits and clean cookstoves at country-wide scale. Simultaneously, we refined our innovative systems-change platform, leveraging our core organizational competencies to improve large-scale public and private actors’ service to smallholders. This success has now placed One Acre Fund in a position where we can realistically envision moving the needle on hunger and poverty across the entire African continent. Our current project with DGIS, “Leading the Charge to Eradicate Rural Poverty,” aims to capture this powerful opportunity. The project involves a smartly structured two-part investment spanning September 15, 2018 – December 31, 2022: First, DGIS is once again providing critical support to the varied, evolving platforms within our organization that lay the foundation for our growth and impact. Core operating support from DGIS will enhance and extend One Acre Fund’s proven model by funding key strategic priorities across our M&E, R&D, and new country expansion units. Secondly, DGIS is also providing working capital to revolutionize One Acre Fund’s growth trajectory. This injection to our ‘permanent fund’ will completely fund our projected expansion of 245,000+ new farm families in 2019, bringing us past the 1 millionth farmer milestone. Crucially, farmers’ loan repayments will replenish our permanent fund each year, allowing us to re-extend this contribution to provide input loans to an estimated 245,000 farm families (including over 980,000 children) annually. This project will anchor One Acre Fund’s expansion to directly serve 1.85 million farm families annually by year-end 2022. Simultaneously, it will help us reach an additional 3.5 million farmers via systems-change partnerships that are expressly designed to transform entire agricultural ecosystems. Together, the reach of these efforts will generate transformative change for rural communities across rural Africa. Malawi currently faces an extremely precarious food security situation, driven by a host of unprecedented external challenges. To support Malawian farmers to bolster their food security, we operate a traditional core program, providing input loans with training for maize and legumes alongside a free tree distribution program. The tree program both serves clients in our core program and outside of it in a tree-only geographic region. We also now run a cash retail program during peak planting period.
Leading the Charge to Eradicate Rural Poverty Our prior project with the Dutch Government, “Subsistence to Self-Reliance – Bringing the Power of Markets to Africa’s Lowest-Income Farmers” underscored our shared passion for inclusive economic development and showcased the key milestones that we can accomplish together. Core operating support from DGIS facilitated the strategic expansion of One Acre Fund’s ‘impact ecosystem.’ Within two years, we doubled the scale of our farmer network, launched operations in two new country programs (Malawi and Uganda), and rolled out impactful new products like tree planting kits and clean cookstoves at country-wide scale. Simultaneously, we refined our innovative systems-change platform, leveraging our core organizational competencies to improve large-scale public and private actors’ service to smallholders. This success has now placed One Acre Fund in a position where we can realistically envision moving the needle on hunger and poverty across the entire African continent. Our current project with DGIS, “Leading the Charge to Eradicate Rural Poverty,” aims to capture this powerful opportunity. The project involves a smartly structured two-part investment spanning September 15, 2018 – December 31, 2022: First, DGIS is once again providing critical support to the varied, evolving platforms within our organization that lay the foundation for our growth and impact. Core operating support from DGIS will enhance and extend One Acre Fund’s proven model by funding key strategic priorities across our M&E, R&D, and new country expansion units. Secondly, DGIS is also providing working capital to revolutionize One Acre Fund’s growth trajectory. This injection to our ‘permanent fund’ will completely fund our projected expansion of 245,000+ new farm families in 2019, bringing us past the 1 millionth farmer milestone. Crucially, farmers’ loan repayments will replenish our permanent fund each year, allowing us to re-extend this contribution to provide input loans to an estimated 245,000 farm families (including over 980,000 children) annually. This project will anchor One Acre Fund’s expansion to directly serve 1.85 million farm families annually by year-end 2022. Simultaneously, it will help us reach an additional 3.5 million farmers via systems-change partnerships that are expressly designed to transform entire agricultural ecosystems. Together, the reach of these efforts will generate transformative change for rural communities across rural Africa.
Leading the Charge to Eradicate Rural Poverty Our prior project with the Dutch Government, “Subsistence to Self-Reliance – Bringing the Power of Markets to Africa’s Lowest-Income Farmers” underscored our shared passion for inclusive economic development and showcased the key milestones that we can accomplish together. Core operating support from DGIS facilitated the strategic expansion of One Acre Fund’s ‘impact ecosystem.’ Within two years, we doubled the scale of our farmer network, launched operations in two new country programs (Malawi and Uganda), and rolled out impactful new products like tree planting kits and clean cookstoves at country-wide scale. Simultaneously, we refined our innovative systems-change platform, leveraging our core organizational competencies to improve large-scale public and private actors’ service to smallholders. This success has now placed One Acre Fund in a position where we can realistically envision moving the needle on hunger and poverty across the entire African continent. Our current project with DGIS, “Leading the Charge to Eradicate Rural Poverty,” aims to capture this powerful opportunity. The project involves a smartly structured two-part investment spanning September 15, 2018 – December 31, 2022: First, DGIS is once again providing critical support to the varied, evolving platforms within our organization that lay the foundation for our growth and impact. Core operating support from DGIS will enhance and extend One Acre Fund’s proven model by funding key strategic priorities across our M&E, R&D, and new country expansion units. Secondly, DGIS is also providing working capital to revolutionize One Acre Fund’s growth trajectory. This injection to our ‘permanent fund’ will completely fund our projected expansion of 245,000+ new farm families in 2019, bringing us past the 1 millionth farmer milestone. Crucially, farmers’ loan repayments will replenish our permanent fund each year, allowing us to re-extend this contribution to provide input loans to an estimated 245,000 farm families (including over 980,000 children) annually. This project will anchor One Acre Fund’s expansion to directly serve 1.85 million farm families annually by year-end 2022. Simultaneously, it will help us reach an additional 3.5 million farmers via systems-change partnerships that are expressly designed to transform entire agricultural ecosystems. Together, the reach of these efforts will generate transformative change for rural communities across rural Africa. In 16 years, One Acre Fund has become Kenya’s largest farming program focused on the rural poor. Our vision is to transform every farming community in Kenya by delivering sustained food security and pathways to prosperity. We are pursuing this vision by deploying three impact channels to address different market gaps: (1) our core program empowers staple-crop farmers via supply, financing, and extension; (2) our ‘duka’ network enables farmers to buy high-quality inputs via supply, and (3) our market access work connects avocado and macadamia farmers with premium harvest prices via aggregation, processing, and offtake.
Leading the Charge to Eradicate Rural Poverty Our prior project with the Dutch Government, “Subsistence to Self-Reliance – Bringing the Power of Markets to Africa’s Lowest-Income Farmers” underscored our shared passion for inclusive economic development and showcased the key milestones that we can accomplish together. Core operating support from DGIS facilitated the strategic expansion of One Acre Fund’s ‘impact ecosystem.’ Within two years, we doubled the scale of our farmer network, launched operations in two new country programs (Malawi and Uganda), and rolled out impactful new products like tree planting kits and clean cookstoves at country-wide scale. Simultaneously, we refined our innovative systems-change platform, leveraging our core organizational competencies to improve large-scale public and private actors’ service to smallholders. This success has now placed One Acre Fund in a position where we can realistically envision moving the needle on hunger and poverty across the entire African continent. Our current project with DGIS, “Leading the Charge to Eradicate Rural Poverty,” aims to capture this powerful opportunity. The project involves a smartly structured two-part investment spanning September 15, 2018 – December 31, 2022: First, DGIS is once again providing critical support to the varied, evolving platforms within our organization that lay the foundation for our growth and impact. Core operating support from DGIS will enhance and extend One Acre Fund’s proven model by funding key strategic priorities across our M&E, R&D, and new country expansion units. Secondly, DGIS is also providing working capital to revolutionize One Acre Fund’s growth trajectory. This injection to our ‘permanent fund’ will completely fund our projected expansion of 245,000+ new farm families in 2019, bringing us past the 1 millionth farmer milestone. Crucially, farmers’ loan repayments will replenish our permanent fund each year, allowing us to re-extend this contribution to provide input loans to an estimated 245,000 farm families (including over 980,000 children) annually. This project will anchor One Acre Fund’s expansion to directly serve 1.85 million farm families annually by year-end 2022. Simultaneously, it will help us reach an additional 3.5 million farmers via systems-change partnerships that are expressly designed to transform entire agricultural ecosystems. Together, the reach of these efforts will generate transformative change for rural communities across rural Africa. Note: DGIS does not fund our Burundi program. As the poorest country One Acre Fund serves, Burundi is where we’ve seen the greatest impact from our model. In 2021, for example, our program generated a 73% increase in annual farm profits on enrolled land, significantly higher than our 45% org-wide average. These gains also have outsize impact in this ultra-poor context – each new dollar of farm profit represents much more value when a family’s entire asset base is $922 (the average for Burundian clients) versus $2,122 (the average for our clients in Kenya).
Subsistence to Self-Reliance - Bringing the Power of Markets to Africa’s Lowest-Income Farmers Founded in 2006, One Acre Fund exists to pursue two core passions: 1) serving the world’s lowest-income populations, smallholder farmers, and 2) developing a market-based solution that dignifies them as paying customers rather than aid recipients. Through our comprehensive ‘market in a box,’ we bring the power of markets directly to rural smallholders. We deliver farm inputs on credit, facilitate flexible repayment, conduct weekly in-field farm trainings, provide post-harvest and market support, and extend protective crop insurance. Unlike traditional charities, our solution interacts with farmers as paying customers. This gives them a commanding voice in our program delivery, and enables a long-term sustainable business model. Importantly, our bundled approach delivers powerful, measurable results for our farmers (the majority of whom are women): within one planting season, they increase their farm income by 50% or more, and begin a swift pathway from subsistence to self-reliance. Since inception, One Acre Fund has pursued the steady expansion of our solution, launching full-scale operations in six East African countries: Kenya, Rwanda, Burundi, Tanzania, Malawi, and Uganda. Yet with 50 million hungry farm households in Sub-Saharan Africa, we remain small against the problem we are trying to solve. Therefore, we are now working to grow as fast as we can, and by the end of 2017, we have an ambitious vision to serve 550,000 farm families, encompassing over two million children. Importantly, as we achieve this new level of growth, the cost-efficiency of our solution will also dramatically increase. We will steadily increase our sustainability (% of costs covered by farmer repayments) through increased economies of scale, requiring only $20 USD in donor subsidy to extend our complete ‘market in a box’ to each rural farm family by the end of 2017. The Dutch Government is serving as an anchor funder to help fuel our growth to this next level of scale and efficiency, providing €4m EUR in program support over two years (2016 and 2017). This support will enable us to also raise an additional €15m EUR in grants for our core program, and to earn an additional €68m EUR in repayments from the farmers we serve. This funding will propel One Acre Fund toward key organizational milestones: in 2017, we plan to serve over half a million farm families, at over 80% financial sustainability. Importantly, this support will place us on a strong trajectory to achieve our 2020 goal: alleviating hunger and poverty for one million farm families.
Helping Farmers Grow to Surplus and Resilience One Acre Fund aims to improve the livelihoods of 7.5M Africa’s smallholder farmers by 2027. We will do this by growing our full-service core program to reach 3 million farmers, and our private and public sector partnerships unit to reach 4.5 million farmers. Transformative funding support from DGIS is helping us to pursue this ambitious growth plan, and unlock $3.1 billion in cumulative farmer impact (increases in farmer income) across the core program and partnerships over 2023-2027.