2019 Annual Report

Not long after Dara Obispo became a single mother at the age of 16, she faced a dilemma. Living in a rural community in Peru’s Amazon basin, and unable to continue her education, she knew there weren’t many options to support her son. So she reluctantly decided to take over her family’s long-abandoned cocoa farm. “It was in such bad shape, I felt discouraged from working the plot,” she said.

To receive a little help, she joined the MUJERES project, a TechnoServe program funded by the West Foundation and Manhattan Beach Community Church that is designed to support female heads of household. She learned practical information about how to manage her crops–and more importantly, she received the message that she could be a successful cocoa farmer. So, with her infant son strapped across her back, she set to work taming the farm.

The first year she started farming, Dara only harvested about 50 kilograms of cocoa beans. But by constantly working to improve her farming practices, she was able to increase her production to more than 370 kilograms this past year. The improved production has helped to change Dara’s life; she no longer has to work odd jobs to make ends meet and can spend more time with her son.

Now 19, Dara wants to continue to improve her farm. “Cocoa is what supports me and my son,” she says. “I want him to be a professional. Even if I don’t have much, I want to give him that. I want him to remember that his mom set him on the right path.”

Norman Nyambu has a natural talent for sales. He used to work as a hawker, walking around the shantytown of Mathare, in Nairobi, Kenya, selling polythene bags. It was difficult work, but over the course of two years, he was able to save his money and open up a corner shop that he christened the “Top Choice Shop.”

These micro-retail shops, referred to as dukas, are vital to marginalized communities in Nairobi and other cities across the developing world, as they supply the majority of essential consumer goods to local residents. However, it can be difficult for many shopkeepers to grow their stores.

That was Norman’s experience. Because Norman had never received training on running a shop, he didn’t keep any sales records, and he soon found himself unable to pay back a loan and at risk of losing the store. At that moment, however, he enrolled in the Smart Duka program, an initiative from the elea Foundation, Citi Foundation, TechnoServe and other partners to support the growth of small retail shops.

Norman learned to keep proper records–which helped him to stock a more profitable mix of products–and improved the layout and appearance of his shop. Now, he has daily sales of $170, and his profits have increased 89 percent relative to what he was earning before. The increased income has allowed him to take better care of his family.

“TechnoServe has been real medicine for my business,” he said.

Reyna García has been growing coffee in eastern Honduras since 2012, but until recently, it wasn’t a very profitable business. While Reyna worked long hours, she struggled to produce high-quality coffee or reach lucrative markets. She received as little as $25 per quintal (100 pounds), which made it difficult to support her six children.

In 2018, Reyna signed up for the MAS 2.0 program, a partnership between the U.S. Department of Agriculture and TechnoServe to help 32,000 farmers in Honduras improve their production and access to finance, markets, and services. In the program, she learned how to more effectively tend to her coffee plants and dry and store the coffee beans so that they don’t develop the kind of defects that ruin their flavor.

As the quality of her coffee improved, Reyna decided to enter it into a regional competition. She was astounded when her coffee won second place and attracted the attention of some of the most demanding specialty coffee buyers in the world. Now, she has been able to sell her coffee for upwards of $400 per quintal–16 times the price she got before.

“With the additional profit from selling the coffee, I bought beds for all my children,” she shares with a smile. “I was also able to purchase clothes, more food, and pay off my debts.”

Growing up in the tenements of Mumbai, Umerah Faridi wasn’t sure she’d ever be able to have a professional career. “Girls in my family rarely get a chance to pursue a college education, let alone go to work,” she says. But she dreamed of providing a better life for her family, so she pursued an education, hoping to beat the odds and attain a white-collar job.

For millions of young people in India like Umerah who come from marginalized communities, even a college education is not enough to help them secure formal employment. That’s why TechnoServe’s Campus to Corporate Careers program, in partnership with multiple private donors and recruiting partners in urban India, is training thousands of youth on important 21st century skills such as personal and professional effectiveness, communication and work-readiness, time management, etc., and helping them to build the self-confidence and abilities they will need to secure and retain formal employment.

After graduating from the program, Umerah landed a job at HDFC Securities, a bank in Mumbai. It came as a shock to her family. “For the longest time, I have only watched television advertisements or seen big billboards of these banks,” her father explains. “Never did I imagine my daughter getting a chance to work for one.”

Now, Umerah is working hard to get her family out of the tenements. “I can now focus on my dream of moving my family into a new, bigger house. This job is going to help me achieve that. Slowly but steadily,” she says.

Growing up, Babatundé Oguidi knew that his hometown of Parakou, Benin, had a garbage problem. Much of it was related to plastic: bags, bottles, and other waste lined the streets. So when he learned about biodegradable materials in university, he knew it could help to transform his city.

That’s when Babatundé decided to create Ola-Bio Benin, a business dedicated to manufacturing biodegradable packaging materials for the agri-food, industrial, and commercial sectors in Parakou. When Babatundé and two others launched the business in 2015, they had a passion for making their city a better place to live, but not much business experience. They had difficulty finding affordable suppliers, struggled to compete with international packaging manufacturers, and lacked the capital they needed to grow.

In 2018, Babatundé enrolled the company in BeniBiz, a business accelerator program implemented by TechnoServe and funded by the Dutch and Swiss governments. Babatundé and his colleagues received training on financial management, customer outreach, marketing, and networking.

The program also helped them improve their sourcing. “The identification of new suppliers of raw materials led to a 26 percent savings on the cost of materials, which has allowed us to lower selling prices and be more competitive,” Babatundé says.

As a result, the company has tripled in size and now employs a team of 12. It is supplying biodegradable packaging materials to pharmacies, bakeries, and even the local movie theater, among a number of businesses nationwide, and it aims to expand to other markets. For Babatundé and his colleagues, that will mean doing more to solve the plastic problem across the country.

A few years ago, Nicaraguan entrepreneur Idalia Medina fulfilled a childhood dream by starting a cheese business named Delicias del Campo. Hoping to export to markets like El Salvador and the United States, she instead experienced frustration as her business’s growth stalled. “I knew what I wanted to do, but I wasn’t organized, and there was no long-term vision,” she says.

In 2019, Idalia joined the Impulsa tu Empresa program, a partnership between TechnoServe and the Argidius Foundation to help entrepreneurs acquire the tools, skills, and networks to make their businesses more competitive. “I’ve learned a lot through the program, but planning and organization have been the most useful,” Idalia says. “It made my plans more assured because I could see what should happen in a successful business.”

In less than a year, her sales have increased by nearly 20 percent, and Idalia expanded her staff from 50 employees to 80. “Every day I think of new positions I need to create within the business because there are gaps we need to fill,” she says.

Idalia has also been able to invest in her employees by providing scholarships for them to receive training in areas like computer literacy. “They are the people who grew with us, so we are investing in their education and not leaving them behind,” she says.

In addition to expanding local employment opportunities, Idalia’s business is also changing the community’s gender perceptions. “My husband used to be the voice of the business because companies didn’t want to meet with me as a woman,” Idalia recalls. “Now, they’ve gotten used to a woman calling the shots.”

Idalia hopes that her story will inspire other women to achieve similar success in traditionally male-dominated fields.

When the Nasir Mohammed hulling station in Agaro, Ethiopia, burned down a few years ago, it didn’t just close a family business. It also deprived local farmers of an important link to global markets.

The fire was caused by a pile of discarded coffee husks, a common hazard at these facilities. Hulling stations purchase sun-dried coffee from smallholder farmers, process it, and deliver it for sale to exporters and global roasters. A well-functioning hulling station can drive demand for locally grown coffees and create local employment. But when these facilities shut down, or are run inefficiently, local communities are harmed, too.

Between 2014 and 2017, TechnoServe worked with 22 hulling stations through the JDE Origin project, a partnership with the coffee and tea company Jacobs Douwe Egberts. The program provided training on business and management skills, helping the hulling stations to operate more effectively and grow. But TechnoServe also found a novel solution to the fire hazard of these discarded husks.

Realizing that the husks could also serve as valuable mulch on coffee farms, TechnoServe worked with the hulling stations to develop a recycling program where the stations distributed husks to local coffee cooperatives. The farmers benefited by receiving a free supply of crop-boosting mulch, while the hulling stations got rid of a safety hazard in a way that also improved coffee production for the farmers they work with.

Nasir Mohammed still sees lasting impact from the program. In 2018, the business opened a new facility, and during the 2019 harvest, the hulling station processed more than 11,000 tons of sun-dried coffee from local farmers. It also employed nearly 130 workers.

Last year, TechnoServe and JDE launched a second phase of the program to work with an additional 30 hulling stations.

“This year, we have distributed about 75 truckloads of husk to different farmer cooperatives, and have also constructed a husk storage facility,” says Muhdin Mohammed, the hulling station manager. “We have learned to improve business skills and implement different sustainability standards in our enterprise.”

He adds: “We are paying good wages to our employees, which can mobilize the economy of the society around our hulling station. When people have a chance to be engaged in the hulling station, they can afford their livelihood, and their kids have a chance for schooling.”

In the green Honde Valley of Zimbabwe’s Eastern Highlands, prosperous farms once provided sustainable livelihoods for generations of coffee growers. Children learned the trade by watching their parents, knowing that one day they would take over the farm.

But decades of political and economic turmoil took its toll on the valley’s coffee industry. The crop became unprofitable for many farmers, and by 2016, just 400 smallholder coffee growers remained. Some, like Tanyaradzwa Makina, were considering ripping out their coffee trees.

Then a change happened. In 2017, Nespresso and TechnoServe launched a project to revive Zimbabwe’s coffee sector, providing training on techniques that improved the productivity of the farms and helped them preserve the natural quality of the local coffee. Nespresso started to purchase the coffee produced by these farmers, providing better prices and payment in U.S. dollars–a valuable perk in a country that has long battled inflation.

The money started to flow through the local economy as farmers like Tanyaradzwa quickly put their earnings to use. “I was so happy,” she says. “I went out and I paid the school fees for my children, and then I paid our debts to the man who built our house.” She also bought food and new clothes for the family.

Samuel Nyakuchena, a 92-year-old farmer in the region, says, “We hope if we work hard, we can get more money in the local economy – in the whole area, we will have more money.”

Indeed, the week that coffee payments are made, there is now a noticeable increase in local market activity, with farmers shop-hopping to buy a host of supplies. Local employment rises during harvest time as farmers have both enough cash and enough coffee for extra laborers to assist.

In 2019, Nespresso launched Tamuka Mu Zimbabwe, a single-origin capsule with coffee grown by the farmers in the Honde Valley. It was the first time in decades that the farmers were able to give consumers around the world a taste of Zimbabwean coffee.

“We are very happy that people out there are drinking our coffee,” Samuel said.

Coffee is vital to Ethiopia. It’s a central part of the national culture, serves as the country’s most valuable export, and provides essential income for millions of farming families. However, the sector still has enormous unmet potential to expand and provide better livelihoods for more than 15 million people.

For that reason, the Ethiopian Coffee and Tea Authority tapped TechnoServe to help develop a plan to grow the country’s coffee sector. The Comprehensive Ethiopian Coffee Strategy and Implementation Roadmap draws upon TechnoServe’s decade of experience designing and implementing programs to support the country’s coffee industry, as well as extensive research and analysis and consultation with key market actors.

The strategy provides a pathway to triple export earnings and farmer incomes over 15 years, generating an additional $1.6 billion for the national economy and $1.2 billion for farming families each year. It provides advice to strengthen six key pillars of the industry: research, farm-level production, processing, value-addition, marketing, and creating a competitive sector.

“TechnoServe’s work to gather and analyze information from stakeholders across the coffee ecosystem, and then help the Ethiopian Coffee and Tea Authority construct a comprehensive strategy for the sector, will help us implement policies and practices that improve the livelihoods of millions of farmers,” said Dr. Adugna Debela, director of the Ethiopian Coffee and Tea Authority.

Over 20 years ago, Mozambique was emerging from decades of war, and its once-strong cashew industry lay in ruins. Processing plants remained shuttered, and farmers didn’t have the tools or training needed to improve their production or reach profitable markets for their crops.

“After the late 1990s, nobody really wanted to hear about the cashew industry. And it was really TechnoServe that believed that there was the potential to re-start the industry here,” says Gonçalo Correia, the managing director of cashew processor Condor Anacardium.

The turnaround story started in the early 2000s. Through a series of programs, TechnoServe helped to revive the country’s cashew processing industry, provided agronomy training to thousands of farmers, and helped cashew producers gain better access to high-quality seedlings and other farming supplies. Today, Mozambique’s cashew sector provides a sustainable livelihood to 1.4 million farmers and employs 15,000 people–overwhelmingly women–in processing plants.

Now, TechnoServe is helping Mozambique’s cashew sector to take its next leap towards improved productivity and transparency. Working with Norges Vel and the Government of Mozambique’s Cashew Promotion Institute (INCAJU), TechnoServe is building a digital tool to provide better data for industry stakeholders and help cashew farmers connect to better information and markets on a large scale.

Using a smartphone application, INCAJU’s agricultural extension agents can work with cashew farmers to enter farm-level data that INCAJU officials can track in real time. This allows INCAJU to make timely, strategic decisions to improve productivity and stop the spread of crop diseases. “Sitting in any corner of the world, including the INCAJU headquarters, we can have access–in real time–to the statistics of what is happening in the sub-sector, including knowing where a specific seedling is planted,” said Humberto Guibunda, the head of the Department of Development and Technology at INCAJU in Maputo.

Through a basic SMS platform, farmers are also able to provide information about their production to be shared with potential buyers, and INCAJU can share localized weather forecasts and planting recommendations with cashew growers.

The first-phase of ConnectCaju has already registered 100,000 farmers, and a new phase of the project, starting in 2020, will register an additional 150,000 farmers into the system.

One of the biggest threats to the potential of low-income countries is malnutrition. This “hidden hunger” contributes to nearly half the deaths of children under age five worldwide, and deprives the global economy of an estimated $3.5 trillion per year.

Among the best ways to improve a population’s nutrition is to fortify commonly consumed foods like flour, sugar, and oil, with essential nutrients. But many food companies in developing countries lack the technical ability or business incentive to fortify their foods at the necessary levels.

It’s a problem that requires a business solution–one that engages partners across sectors and motivates the whole food processing community to continue improved fortification practices on their own.

In 2016, TechnoServe joined with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Partners in Food Solutions, which provides expertise from leading international food companies. Working in Nigeria, Kenya, and Tanzania, TechnoServe helped food processors understand and implement better fortification techniques, while also improving operations and reducing costs. It then created “positive peer pressure” by bringing together the CEOs of major food processors in annual meetings where they shared progress, exchanged ideas, and publicly committed to improved fortification practices.

These methods–along with a host of others–sparked immediate improvement in food fortification levels. The percentage of adequately fortified foods produced by participating companies increased from an average of 54% to 72%, resulting in 2.5 million more metric tons of nutritious food produced per year. The impact? This healthier food reached an astonishing 184 million more people than before–improving their nutrition, productivity, and future opportunities.

Young adults in Africa face a stark reality: each year, 10 to 12 million of them enter the job market, but only about 3 million jobs are created annually.

To secure their futures–and the economic and political stability of the countries in which they live–many of Africa’s youth will need to create their own opportunities. Helping them achieve this on a wide scale is one of the world’s most critical challenges.

TechnoServe had previously trained over 15,000 young people in east Africa to become economically self-sufficient, with most participants running small farms or businesses that increased their incomes by an average of 133%. The training curriculum went beyond the usual entrepreneurship skills, helping youth develop the confidence and “soft skills” to advocate for themselves, seek out opportunities, and engage effectively with everyone from customers to banks.

But now, how could this progress be scaled up and sustained?

TechnoServe and the Mastercard Foundation developed a second phase of this successful program, “Strengthening Rural Youth Development through Enterprise” (STRYDE). Not only would TechnoServe train thousands more young people, it would also teach local institutions how to do the same thing–long after TechnoServe’s departure.

Across east Africa, TechnoServe trained 124 youth-focused organizations like vocational schools, community organizations, government ministries, and even prisons, how to deliver the STRYDE model. These institutions then trained 21,000 youth, and continue to train thousands more each year.

The STRYDE program closed last year after teaching more than 71,000 African youth how to grow their own incomes. But the STRYDE model continues–now part of the regular service offerings of local institutions. As trainers from the Mityana Agrovet Institute in Uganda reported: “All students want to be in STRYDE…it opens their eyes to the wider world.”