Women's Economic Empowerment

Byagatonda Emmanuel and his wife Murerehe Speciose live in a prime coffee-producing area in Rwanda, but for years they produced low-quality coffee in small quantities.

Access to credit frees Haitian farmers to sell and invest on their own terms. As part of the Haiti Hope Project, TechnoServe and its partners have launched a pilot loan program for farmers who have difficulty accessing credit in Haiti.

In the developing world, small businesses face a number of obstacles that their counterparts in developed countries do not.

Sam Koole, chairman of the Kainja Mango Farmers Association, remembers a time only a few years ago when the fruit from the Sena, a variety of mango native to eastern Uganda, was left to rot on the ground. Since launching Project Nurture in 2010, local farmers are no longer taking the Sena for granted.

Even in the poorest of countries, business opportunities exist. People have demand for goods and services, and they have the potential to supply them. All too often, though, markets in these countries fail.

In the winter of 2012, I joined TechnoServe directly from a management consulting position in San Francisco. Four months and more than 100 stakeholder interviews later, what was once a side note on a scope of work now has great impact on how TechnoServe looks at dairy interventions.

TechnoServe, with support from the U.S. Agency for International Development, has helped farmers in Tanzania to improve their production, form business groups and sell their produce in bulk.

The great Peter Drucker once said, “Innovation is the specific instrument of entrepreneurship. The act that endows resources with a new capacity to create wealth.” The story of Liset and Ximena Contreras embodies this quote and much more.

The 54-member farming cooperative began working with TechnoServe in August 2010 to improve their business skills and diversify into a new market opportunity: purple passion fruit. With TechnoServe’s assistance, Tiret Self-Help Group built a passion fruit nursery and sowed the first seeds in December 2010. As the first vines begin…

The 39-year-old mother of four grew food crops to feed her family, but earned little income from her tomato crop because of poor quality and limited access to markets. Martha, like many farmers in her community, had no choice but to accept the low prices offered by…