AI for Development, Climate Solutions, and Better Food Security: What We’re Looking Forward to in 2025
The coming year promises to be an important one for the fight against poverty. We asked TechnoServe leaders around the globe to tell us what they are looking forward to in 2025.
2025: Scaling Climate Solutions for People, Planet, and the Bottom Line
Katarina Kahlmann, Chief Program Officer
In 2025, scaling nature-based solutions to address climate change will be pivotal in improving livelihoods for low-income communities. COP30 in Brazil offers a unique platform to spotlight small-scale farmers and entrepreneurs as key players in climate action. We will see these solutions in action in 2025, as well. For example, through a partnership between TechnoServe and Acorn, Latin American coffee farmers participating in the MOCCA program will receive carbon-credit payments for planting shade trees that help to remove carbon from the atmosphere.
2025 will bring exciting advancements in AI, with opportunities to enhance livelihoods and environmental sustainability. AI is transitioning from a buzzword to a transformative tool for improving incomes and environmental outcomes. For example, it has helped TechnoServe and our partners map cashew production across a large swathe of Africa, and it is also helping to power our remote and blended learning tools for farmers and entrepreneurs.
Finally, I look forward to TechnoServe’s growing work supporting micro, small, and medium-sized recycling businesses this year. Building on a very successful program in Ethiopia, we will help entrepreneurs in Nigeria, South Africa, and elsewhere create businesses that generate economic opportunity while tackling plastic and paper pollution and conserving natural resources.
Innovative Food and Nutrition Products for 2025
Carolyne Maina, Program Director, NutriSave
In 2025, I look forward to going beyond and translating all the research, prototyping, and testing to create innovative products that meet market demand and have a meaningful impact. And I look forward to going through many walls together with my team in Kenya, NutriSave, and globally.
Transforming Food Systems Sustainably in 2025
Dominic Schofield, Global Director for Food Systems Transformation
How food is grown, processed, distributed, sold, and consumed plays a huge role in reducing poverty, ending malnutrition, and combating climate change. That’s why I’m so excited that TechnoServe will implement our new local food systems transformation strategy this year. We will work with partners to ensure that farmers, entrepreneurs, and businesses in the food system can thrive and improve the resilience and diets of people in countries across Africa, Latin America, and Asia.
We will see that happen in Kenya, where the USAID Feed the Future Food Systems Activity will launch this year. By 2029, the program will help local businesses produce 192,000 MT of nutritious food for low-income consumers and improve the livelihoods of 200,000 people.
I am also excited for TechnoServe to consolidate the gains made in food fortification across 12 African and Asian countries through Millers for Nutrition and the USAID Feed the Future AFFORD programs. Our intention is to add at least three more national programs and hundreds of new millers to these platforms.
Finally, while TechnoServe has already worked directly with nearly 700 food processors in sub-Saharan Africa, I look forward to expanding this support to businesses in Latin America and the Caribbean. Across the region, more than 40 million people suffer from hunger, 30-40% cannot afford a nourishing diet, and obesity rates have reached epidemic levels. A thriving business sector is essential for sustaining large-scale solutions to these challenges.
Puerto Rico Coffee Farmers: Improving Livelihoods in 2025
Alejandro Marchand, Program Manager, Revivamos Nuestro Cafe
What I’m most looking forward to in 2025–being the last year of our program–is actually working with our farmers or beneficiaries to achieve the greatest source of impact that we can for them and having a successful closeout for the program.
Cutting-Edge Technology, Lasting Impact for Entrepreneurs
Juan Carlos Thomas, Vice President for Entrepreneurship and New Ventures
This year presents an exciting opportunity to test new approaches, learn, and scale what works across our approximately two dozen entrepreneurship programs in Africa, Latin America, and Asia.
One of our objectives in recent years has been enhancing entrepreneurial ecosystems so local businesses can thrive and create new jobs. One important dimension is helping Enterprise Development Organizations (ESOs) in these communities provide cost-effective and sustainable incubation and acceleration services for entrepreneurs. This year, we will launch the TechnoServe Entrepreneurship Academy, an initiative to capture the lessons we’ve learned in supporting ESOs to further enhance and scale our work in the space.
Since the COVID-19 pandemic, we have also learned a lot about effectively supporting entrepreneurs remotely. We have piloted a new type of program that fully leverage educational technology to scale our reach and dramatically reduce our intervention costs. In 2025, we are looking to scale up this pilot across several countries in Latin America and Africa in partnership with several corporate and private partners, dramatically expanding our ability to support entrepreneurs in places we couldn’t have reached with more traditional intervention models.
This year, we will be further building our understanding of the role of AI in the development of micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises, both as a tool for enhancing TechnoServe’s work and as a tool to be accessed by our supported entrepreneurs to enhance their businesses.
Finally, I am excited to see new research about the lasting impact of TechnoServe’s work. We have scaled the impact of our entrepreneurship work by more than 6X in recent years. This year, a research partner will be publishing results looking at how entrepreneurs who graduated from our programs in Latin America almost a decade ago are doing. Were the skills we equipped them with still useful after all these years and a global pandemic? Stay tuned!
Green Business Innovations: Sustainable Growth in 2025
Garvita Sharma, Marketing and Communications Manager, Greenr
I’m really looking forward to the launch of the third cohort of Greenr. Every new batch comes with a set of challenges and opportunities and the opportunity to learn about new and innovative solutions. In 2025, we’ll also see the culmination of the entire team’s hard work with the second cohort: seeing their growth journey is really exciting. I’m also looking forward to the opportunity to keep learning.
