Effective agriculture has the power to change lives. It underpins prosperity, food security and stability the world over. Farm Africa champions a holistic approach that boosts yields, protects the environment and connects smallholder farmers to thriving markets.

We work with different types of farmers in a range of regions across eastern Africa. Their local situations vary, but the problems they face are all too familiar: low viability of rural livelihoods, poor links to markets, environmental degradation, inadequate agricultural inputs, vulnerability to climate change, pandemic recovery, youth unemployment and gender inequality.

We have an ambitious strategy to expand our work over the next five years. We’ll increase our impact. Lift more communities out of poverty. Connect more farmers and agribusinesses to markets. Empower more women economically. Protect more landscapes. Provide more expertise.

We’ll make change happen.

Agriculture

Farm Africa will support one million smallholder farmers and agro-pastoralists per year to increase their productivity, household incomes and resilience to shocks. We will boost livelihoods in a number of core value chains such as coffee, aquaculture, oilseeds and livestock, and increase farmers’ participation in market systems, while exploring regenerative agricultural principles and nature-based solutions that promote responsible environmental stewardship.

Environment

Farm Africa will implement integrated landscape management projects in all countries of operation, supporting the sustainable management of 12 priority landscapes, including forests, rangelands and coastal ecosystems. We will pursue payment for ecosystem services schemes, including carbon sequestration and REDD+ projects.

Market engagement

We will support at least 200 farmer groups, cooperatives and small and growing businesses (SGBs) to grow sustainably and support 12 private sector lead firms to transition to sustainable supply chains.

These three thematic pillars will be underpinned by five cross-cutting priorities:

• Climate action: We will work to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and strengthen the resilience and adaptive capacity of communities to climate change.
• Gender equality: We will design projects to be gender-sensitive and include meaningful outcomes for women’s economic empowerment.
• Youth employment: We will emphasise the creation of job opportunities for young people throughout the value chain.
• Resilience: We will enhance communities’, enterprises’ and ecosystems’ ability to mitigate and adapt to shocks.
• Agri-tech: We will embrace the use of technology at all stages of the value chain.

The concept of food systems - describing the connections between producers, consumers, the environment and policy - provides a useful way of integrating the approaches and is the lens through which our approaches, interventions and programmes are analysed.