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Regional

14 January 2025

Celebrating 40 years of impact

Adnakeche, chairwoman of a women's group supported by Farm Africa in 2009.

Adnakeche, chairwoman of a women's group supported by Farm Africa in 2009.

The year 2025 marks a significant milestone for Farm Africa, as the organisation celebrates 40 years of impact.

Our roots stretch back to 2 August 1985, when we were first registered as a charity. Since then, Farm Africa has been at the forefront of working with rural communities in eastern Africa to reduce poverty by farming in harmony with nature.

Farm Africa was founded by the late Sir Michael Wood, a founder of the Flying Doctor Service and the African Medical Research Foundation (AMREF), and the late David Campbell OBE, an agriculturalist and specialist in African rural development.

Originally called FARM-Africa, with FARM standing for Food and Agricultural Resource Mission, shortly changed to Management, the organisation was started in response to the famine in Ethiopia with the firm belief that developing small-scale agriculture was the key to reducing rural poverty.

“Michael and I both believed passionately in the need to revitalise African agriculture, to break the mould which often inhibited development and to find new more effective strategies.”

David Campbell

Co-founder of Farm Africa

Describing the origins of Farm Africa, David Campbell commented: “Michael, who seldom spoke about himself, said: “I have concluded after a life’s work as a surgeon in Africa that food is the best medicine. I now want to start an initiative to tackle the problem in new ways.’ I jumped at this: ‘I too want to concentrate on food production. May I join you?’”

To start with, Farm Africa supported camel herding pastoralist communities in northern Kenya, then added a dairy goat project in Ethiopia, using an approach we then replicated in other countries and that is still used by Farm Africa today.

Farm Africa’s first goat project.

This involved supporting women living in poverty, including those widowed by civil war, to upgrade local goats, kept largely for meat, by cross-breeding them with milk goats such as Toggenburgs and Anglo Nubians, with advice given on growing the necessary forage and providing veterinary care. The milk from the goats strengthened families’ nutrition and the surplus could be sold. The result was that many women began to climb out of extreme poverty.

Expansion to Tanzania followed in 1990, and to South Africa in 1991 and southern Sudan in 2005. As Farm Africa grew, we expanded into other areas including forestry. The core aim of our work remained the same: to support rural communities to increase their incomes while protecting the natural resources on which they rely.

Today, Farm Africa has programmes in Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and DR Congo, supporting a wide range of rural communities from fish farmers to coffee growers to herders.

A participant in Farm Africa’s Youth in Sustainable Aquaculture project in Kenya in 2024.

What unites our projects is a focus on long-term impact. Farm Africa prioritises equipping rural communities with the support and skills they need to make a decent living for themselves, year after year, long after we withdraw our support.

Teresia, a smallholder farmer from Tanzania who used to struggle to get by, is testament to the transformational impact taking part in Farm Africa’s sesame project in 2010 had on her family’s life. She described life before working with Farm Africa:

“Before I joined the Farm Africa sesame project I was a farmer, but I just grew food for my family, subsistence farming. My life was very tough. I had four young children, and it was very tough to pay for them all to go to school. I had problems paying for everyday essentials.”

After receiving support from Farm Africa to grow and sell the cash crop sesame, Teresia was able to increase her income to the point where she could replace her family’s small house with a grass roof with a brick-built house, as well as eat better.

Teresia standing in front of her home in Tanzania in 2024.

Today, Teresia still farms sesame, and has also diversified into growing sunflowers and pigeon peas. What’s more, her experience inspired her grown-up children to set up profitable sesame farming businesses too.

Climate change and global economic stability are now intensifying the challenges facing families like Teresia’s across eastern Africa, making our work more relevant than ever.

Farm Africa remains committed to working with smallholder farmers and small businesses to unlock the transformative potential of sustainable and effective agriculture.

In our 40th year of operation, you can help create more stories we can all be proud of by making a donation today.

 

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