Gulu, Uganda

Finding Hope after Horror

When Christine Acan was just a child, she was abducted by Joseph Kony’s rebels. She was subjected to horrific psychological torture and was even forced to participate in the killing of her family members. Christine eventually managed to escape her captors and, like millions of others across northern Uganda, looked for a way to rebuild her life. But she had few economic opportunities.

Seeking a better future, she enrolled in TechnoServe’s Strengthening Rural Youth Development through Enterprise (STRYDE) program, which gives young people in East Africa’s rural communities training on life skills, business and a trade, so that they can start their own businesses or find paying jobs. In its first phase, which ended in July 2015, the project helped 15,000 youth increase their income by an average of 133 percent. The project’s second phase aims to help an additional 48,000 young people.

Christine Acan is building a safe and prosperous future for her family.

Christine used her training – and a $6 investment – to start a bakery. Now, the 25-year-old earns $15 per day from the business. With her new income, she has been able to pay for her children’s school fees, invest in a rock quarry and even purchase her own land, where she plans to start commercial farming. “STRYDE changed my thinking about life and opened my eyes to be a more enterprising person,” she said.

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Kubori, Ghana

Plowing for Profits

Abu Adam, owner of Damba Farms in northern Ghana, never pictured agriculture as a source of income for his family. He mainly farmed just to produce enough food for his family, selling the occasional surplus to add to his monthly salary. That was until TechnoServe and John Deere’s Mobile Training Unit offered a training in his community. The program uses a truck outfitted with audio and visual equipment to reach extremely rural communities.

Using what he learned from the training session, Abu's yield at the end of the next harvest year increased so much, he became convinced he could make money from farming. After Abu attended an entrepreneurship training program, TechnoServe helped him access a loan for a tractor.

The Mobile Training Unit provides targeted training to rural communities in Ghana and Kenya, helping farmers generate $5.3 million in revenue in 2015.

He then began providing tractor services for 420 small farmers, as well as loans for inputs for other farmers, who in turn sell their harvest to Abu to pay back the loans. This business model now includes nearly 2,000 farmers from neighboring towns. Abu’s business has grown so much that in 2015, Damba Farms produced 400 tons of rice and 230 tons of maize, netting a $46,000 profit.

Abu Adam has received awards recognizing his service to the local farmers and serves as a role model encouraging others to take up farming as a business.

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Kiambu, Kenya

Digital Breakthroughs on the Farm

Every morning at first light, Loise Wanjiru Waweru milks the cows on the dairy farm she runs with her husband. As members of Ndumberi Dairy Cooperative, they deliver most of their daily milk to a local collection point in Kiambu, Kenya. But until recently, Loise wasn’t seeing the results of their labor until she received payment at the end of the month. She had no way of reconciling the monthly receipt with the daily deliveries, and suspected that some of the milk was being stolen by farm workers or the collection center staff.

Loise’s fears were well-founded. Fraud was causing the loss of 20 percent of the daily milk supplied to Ndumberi, resulting in a significant drop for member farmers and their families. TechnoServe and our partners on the Connected Farmer Alliance developed a service to address these issues.

Now Loise receives an SMS receipt on her phone every day showing the exact amount of milk delivered. Daily receipts are just one of the services offered through the Connected Farmer platform, which uses mobile technology to improve how farmers work with agribusinesses. The solution allows businesses to register farmers, provide farming advice, make payments and extend farmer loans.

The service enabled Ndumberi to cut operating costs by 40 percent and increase its milk supply. More than 2,000 farmers who supply milk to Ndumberi are tracking their sales and receiving price information along with tailored advice right on their phones. “Joining the Connected Farmer program has made a big difference to us,” said Loise’s husband, Peter. “Our sales have gone up, which has benefited our family.”

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Gomma, Ethiopia

From Coffee to Corn: Feeding the Future

Like most coffee farmers in Ethiopia’s Jimma region, Aman Aboali also grows maize. In fact, maize stalks occupy nearly as much space on his hilly farm as the coffee trees do. But the yield and income from both crops were inadequate. “The farm did not produce enough to feed me from the proceeds,” he said.

In 2012, Aman became one of more than 70,000 Ethiopian coffee farmers to receive training through TechnoServe’s Coffee Initiative. He learned how to make his coffee trees more productive, and by weeding, pruning and stumping them, he doubled their yields in three years. His coffee income increased by 64 percent.

After increasing his coffee income through better farming, Aman was able to open a small shop and invest in maize to feed his family.

Through the Coffee Initiative, which concluded its second phase in December 2015, Aman also learned how to make his maize crops more productive, but buying improved seed and the right fertilizer represented a major expense. Fortunately, Aman could now afford it: “Income from coffee helped with maize inputs,” he said. Like Aman, more than three-quarters of the farmers trained on maize production adopted new and improved techniques.

By 2015, Aman was growing 80 percent more maize – just in time to feed a growing family. He has big dreams for his infant son: “I want him to be an engineer,” he said, smiling.

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Santa Rosita, Honduras

Smallholders Stand Up to Climate Change

Orbelina Vásquez had long faced falling production from the coffee trees on her small farm in Honduras. Several years ago, she also witnessed drought and coffee leaf rust – a crop disease that has swept across Central America, decimating coffee trees, and is likely spurred on by climate change. For Orbelina, the timing could not have been worse: with one son in university and another hoping to follow in his footsteps, the single mother urgently needed to earn more money.

She was determined to improve her farm, so in 2014, she signed up to participate in TechnoServe’s Sustainable Agricultural Improvement program, which has benefited 26,500 coffee and bean farmers in Honduras. Coffee farmers like Orbelina have learned techniques to rejuvenate their coffee trees, making them more productive and resistant to leaf rust and other effects of climate change.

By applying good agricultural practices like tree pruning, Orbelina defeated a destructive coffee fungus and doubled her yield.

The project has also facilitated direct sales to coffee exporters – so farmers can earn higher prices – and access to financing for inputs that help make the coffee plants stronger. As a result, average yields have increased by 30 percent and revenues have increased by 60 percent.

Orbelina’s farm is now doing better than ever. In just one year, her production doubled and the price that exporters pay for her coffee rose 50 percent above what she used to get from middlemen. With her income tripled, Orbelina can now look to the future with optimism.

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Purnia, India

Fair Prices for Farmers’ Crops

Shakila Khatun used to be dependent on an unorganized network of maize traders to sell her grain, resulting in a low price. These traders mostly determine maize quality by sight and feel, and the product was weighed manually.

Without direct access to markets and large quantities to sell, Shakila and the small farmers of Purnia district in India’s Bihar State were unable to negotiate better prices. TechnoServe worked with businesses including AAPCL – an all-women’s maize producer company of which Shakila is a member – to facilitate sales over an electronic trading platform and aggregate harvests so that the women had larger quantities to sell.

Women farmers in Bihar are reaping more profit from their maize thanks to transparency practices and direct electronic access to buyers.

Member farmers were trained on improved post-harvest practices, including using electronic weighing machines and digital moisture meters to ensure transparency during collection and sales.

“This is the first time in my life I’ve seen someone procure maize from a farmer’s door step with such transparent procedure," said Shakila. Within three days of each sale, payment would be credited directly to her account, ensuring Shakila timely access to the proceeds of her harvest.

As a result of the nine-month pilot project, AAPCL was able to procure and sell over 1,000 metric tons of maize, and the women farmers received an 11.5 percent increase in price for their maize. For Shakila and her associates, the success of the project has built a sense of ownership and pride in their work.

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Khayelitsha, South Africa

Self-made Spinach King

Lufefe Nomnjana noticed his neighbor’s unhealthy lifestyles every day. “Everything was unhealthy; the food eaten by the people, drugs, gangsterism, even the water people drank,” he said of his home in Khayelitsha township in South Africa. This inspired young Lufefe to launch his bakery, Espinaca Innovations, which sells bread, muffins and sandwiches baked with a special ingredient: spinach.

Lufefe’s vision is to offer the people of his township a healthy alternative to the unhealthy food that is more readily available. In order to achieve this vision Espinaca Innovations needed to expand and grow. TechnoServe and Citi Foundation’s AWESAM program has provided Lufefe with the personalized business development support needed to get his bread into supermarket chains to increase his distribution.

With increased demand for his healthy spinach bread from local retailers, Lufefe and his small staff bake 120 loaves a day.

The program has supported 83 youth- and women-led businesses in South Africa to expand and grow past the early stage. Altogether in 2015, TechnoServe and Citi Foundation worked with more than 300 entrepreneurs across four African countries.

For Lufefe this support has allowed him to expand his shop, which bakes 120 loaves a day and now employs five people. As a result of the project’s support, the bakery’s revenues increased by 56 percent. Lufefe was also able to put in place an accounting system, which will help him access additional funding as he continues to grow.

“My dream is to impact the community and improve people’s lives through healthy eating and a healthy lifestyle,” said Lufefe. “I was so thrilled and honored to get this kind of assistance.”

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Ennery, Haiti

Cultivating Lasting Impact

In 2013, Haitian mango farmer Marie-Carme Fils-Aime joined a farmer group named Leve Kanpay, Creole for “Rise Up” – and that is exactly what she did. With training provided by the Haiti Hope Project, she and her husband were able to grow more mangoes and profitably sell them on the export market to Whole Foods with USDA Organic and Fair Trade certification. Between 2011 and 2015, more than 25,000 farmers like Marie-Carme participated in the project, selling roughly $7.5 million of fruit.

“We’re selling more than ever before, both in our own communities and around the world. And we’re organized to sell directly to the international market,” said Marie-Carme. She also rose up through the ranks of her farmer group: when the Haiti Hope Project ended in 2015, Marie-Carme was appointed by Leve Kanpay to continue training members on good farming techniques.

This is just one sign that the changes brought by the Haiti Hope project will continue long after its completion. Farmers who participated in Haiti Hope have planted more than 63,000 new mango trees, promising a future source of fruit and income. And TechnoServe has built the capacity of Haiti’s public and private sector to support and develop the mango value chain for years to come.

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