Invest in small-scale farms 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)