Improving lives, Building futures www.africare.org

OUR CORE COMPETENCIES

Agriculture & Food Security

Health, HIV & AIDS

Water, Sanitation & Hygiene

Women’s Empowerment

Resettlement

SUPPLY CHAIN DEVELOPMENT

For over 40 years Africare has worked with small farmers across Africa to reduce hunger and poverty. By helping them grow more food and earn more income, we strengthen individual farmers, their families and entire farm communities. We accomplish this by organizing farmers into farmer organizations and equipping them with the tools and training they need to improve their productivity, reduce post-harvest losses, process their crops and sell their produce.

We have extensive experience and many successes across the full con-tinuum of connecting farmers to markets, from building rural roads and providing farmers real-time market information, to integrating small farmers into supply chains for local, regional and global markets.

In addition to our technical expertise, the other key to our success is our deep understanding of the socio-cultural context for promoting behav-ior change and innovation in smallholder agriculture: more than 95% of Africare’s nearly 1,500 employees are African.

As you will see from the sample of our experiences below, Africare’s suc-cessful supply chain development model enables farmers to lift themselves out of poverty by penetrating competitive market chains and becoming reliable sources of good quality production.

Success In Linking Producers to Markets

Chad: In 2008, Africare launched its Initiative for the Economic Empowerment of Women Entrepreneurs Project (IEEWEP) with support from ExxonMobil. The project has reached 3,000 women in eight enterprise areas with a full complement of training, support, and organization into savings and loans groups. Africare facilitated support for all points of the value chain, and IEEWEP co-operatives have procured local contracts such as tailor co-ops providing uniforms for schools and a restaurant co-op that supplied lunches to the ExxonMobil subsidiary, ESSO. One of the IEEWEP business areas is shea butter production for the Western beauty market. Africare is partnering with Kasny Recon, Inc., a Texas-based Chadian Diaspora manufacturer of top quality, natural, personal care products that are based on the highly sought after, AAA-grade shea butter produced by IEEWEP women’s co-operatives. Kasny Recon sells their premium raw materials in bulk and links Africare-supported producers to shea butter end-users in European, Asian, North American and South American markets.

Malawi: Since 2009, Africare has mobilized more than 8,000 farm-ers (80% of whom are women), who have organized themselves into marketing groups, and trained them in the FaaB package. Africare has

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SUPPLY CHAIN DEVELOPMENT

also linked the farmers to local and regional buyers such as Exagris Ltd., NASFAM and Nali Ltd., and the farmers have earned total revenues in excess of $190,000 from their high value products such as pigeon peas, soya beans, chilies and groundnuts. Farmers also have been linked to market informa-tion providers such as Market Linkages Initiative (MLI) and Agriculture Commodity Exchange (ACE) as well as agro deal-ers like Agriculture Trading Center (ATC) for farm inputs.

Mozambique: Since 2008, Africare has organized and trained 20,000 smallholders in five districts of Nampula Province. These smallholders have formed nearly 800 associations through which they have learned advanced production techniques, seed multiplication, conservation agriculture and business practices. Beneficiary farmers have seen yield increases of 30% to as high as 150%, which for most is not only enough food to feed their families but enough for a surplus to sell in the market. Hunger months have significantly decreased, and an accompanying health and nutrition program positively impacted young children, pregnant women and new moth-ers. Through the strength of their associations, farmers have negotiated sales contracts of groundnuts, sesame, mung bean, maize and cowpeas with established buyers such as OLAM, PANNAR, CorredorAgro and Export Marketing. Through ESOKO, a market information system, 133 associations sell to buyers via an SMS-based marketplace. In the last year, 65 associations reported incomes greater than $20,000.

Tanzania: An overdependence on natural resources was causing excessive deforestation and land degradation in the Miombo Woodlands, so Africare organized farmers into agribusiness associations to reverse the trend and generate income sustainably. Collaborating with Tradecraft Exchange, Faida Mali, Traceability Tanzania Limited, the University of Dar es Salaam, the Ministry of Natural Resources and Tourism’s Forest and Beekeeping Division, and Honey Care Tanzania, Africare orchestrated the synergies necessary to improve the quantity and quality of honey and beeswax pro-duced by farming groups for sale in domestic and export markets. The partnership conducted a value chain analysis for beekeeping in Tanzania, identified gaps in the produc-tion and marketing of good quality bee products and closed the gaps. As a result, between 2005 and 2010 approximately 10,000 beekeepers accrued almost $8 million selling more than 31,000,000kg of honey and 536,000kg of beeswax.

Uganda: From 2007 to 2011, Africare organized more than 27,000 farmers (47% women) into groups, and Africare facilitated agribusiness-related initiatives in 172 villages that increased average annual household incomes from $263 to $667. One group of 30 farmers earned $40,983 over a 2-year period from a contract providing Solanum potatoes to Nandos,

a fast food restaurant in Kampala. Africare also linked beekeep-ers to the Agriculture Development and the Integrated Organic Farming (ADIOF) organization which exports honey to the EU market. With USAID support, and using Africare’s own road equipment, 200km of main and feeder roads were also built to facilitate market access and increase farm gate prices.

Zambia: Africare’s FaaB has enabled more than 15,000 farm-ers to access inputs and lucrative vegetable and grain markets through contracts with agribusiness service providers, hotels and chain supermarkets. Africare’s Smallholder Enterprise and Marketing Project (SHEMP) trained 300 smallholder enterprise groups made up of 6,000 smallholder enterprises in the FaaB package and facilitated business contracts for 58 marketing associations linked with 45 agribusinesses. This generated sales valued at more than $600,000 between 2002 and 2006. Training in production and marketing also enabled the Nsongwe Women Project, a group of 28 women, to acquire contracts to supply high quality, fresh vegetables to Livingstone Sun Hotels and Freshmark, the supplier of vegetables to the international chain Shoprite, earning them more than $1,500 every month. Through a USAID funded Integrated Water Management and Crop Diversification proj-ect, Africare organized and trained more than 11,200 farm-ers in agribusiness management. The farmers produced a wide variety of crops and earned more than $500,000 from sales to seed companies such as Kamano Seeds.

Zimbabwe: In 2004, Africare introduced Zimbabwean farmers to the Vita Cow, a low cost technology that by processing soybeans into soymilk and yogurt provides a high protein, inexpensive alternative to dairy products. Producers marketed the soymilk through major supermarkets like Thomas Meikles (TM), Lucky 7 and Spar in Mashonaland Central Province, carving out a significant market share. Another successful Africare-supported enterprise is the Murimi Oil Press Cooperative, formed in 2006. Africare empowered 2,087 farmers (51% women) to engage in soybean production and marketing with contracts to IETC Zimbabwe, a subsidiary of an international company called Export Trading Group based in Tanzania. This project won an international award for Best Practices and Innovations from InterAction in 2010. Finally, through the USAID funded Mashonaland Livelihoods Restoration Project, Africare facili-tated the formation of an association of 1,000 farmers and linked them to the Zimbabwe Farmers’ Union. Contracts for their horticultural crops - tomatoes, cucumbers, butternuts and potatoes - earned $883,000 over a period of nine months.

For more information about Africare’s work visit www.africare.org or contact Africare House 440 R Street, N.W. Washington, D.C. 20001. Phone: + 1 202-462-3614 Fax: + 1 202-464-0867