Help 500 Smallholder Farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa

Updates from One Acre Fund: 

• Strong core program impact: While still preliminary, initial 2023 estimates point to One Acre Fund generating an above-target $130 income gain per core program farmer (representing 32% more farm income for One Acre Fund farmers than controls). We attribute this significant income boost during a challenging farming season to high maize market prices and harvest improvements resulting from increased training compliance.
• Scale: We served 1.5M farm families through our core (direct service) program in 2023. Our slight decline in growth relative to last year is mainly due to enrollment shortfalls in Kenya, where a government fertilizer subsidy significantly lowered demand for our services. On the other hand, our core programs have experienced rapid growth in Burundi and Malawi, where smallholder farmers face severe constraints in improving their livelihoods, with few alternatives for support. Furthermore we achieved above target growth in our systems-change unit, reaching 3.4M additional farmers through our partnership work.
• Digital Innovations: Following the country-wide launch of Tupande Online in Kenya last year, our Tupande mobile app was recognized as Kenya’s best agriculture app by Vibrant Digital Africa’s 2023 mobile app awards. The Tupande app was selected for its ability to leverage tech to enhance agricultural practices and support the farming community. We continue to explore ways to combine our Tupande Online app with additional features. For example, we are testing ways to integrate our satellite remote sensing weather monitoring program to provide smallholders with tailored farming recommendations directly to their phones.

• 2023_Q4_One_Acre_Fund_Performance_Report.pdf (PDF)
  

Here are a few highlights from our Q3 report:

• Behind-target scale: We expect to reach 1.48M clients through our core program, falling below our 2023 scale target. This is mainly due to enrollment shortfalls in Kenya (historically one of our largest markets), where a government fertilizer subsidy is significantly lowering demand for our services. On the other hand, our core program has experienced rapid growth in Burundi and Malawi, where smallholder farmers face severe constraints in improving their livelihoods, with few alternatives for support.

• Hilton Humanitarian Prize: One Acre Fund was recently awarded the 2023 Hilton Humanitarian Prize for our work supporting Africa’s smallholder farmers to build resilient communities. We are humbled to receive this honor, and are excited to use this platform to shine a bright spotlight on the critical role farmers will play in solving our planet's biggest challenges this century 

• Program evolution in 2023: In light of dynamic market conditions, we have made business model shifts to our program in Kenya and Tanzania to better meet evolving farmer needs.  Although accompanied by challenging restructurings, these shifts dramatically reduce our cost base and provide more flexibility in when and how farmers purchase inputs and access training through our program.  

• 2023_Q3_One_Acre_Fund_Performance_Report.pdf (PDF)