One Acre Fund (OAF) and Landesa
The face of global extreme poverty is increasingly an African women farmers’ issue, and the causes of this inequity are deeply troubling. Farmers are the key to ending hunger and poverty in our lifetime. By investing in smallholder farmers, subsistence farming can be transformed into a productive source of employment and lift millions out of poverty.
Extreme poverty is concentrated in rural Africa. By 2030, the World Bank forecasts that 9 out of 10 of the world’s poor will live in Africa. Extreme poverty is concentrated within a single demographic: rural smallholder farmers, primarily women. Nearly 80% of Africans in extreme poverty rely on agriculture for their livelihood. Women in rural Africa are significantly overrepresented among the extremely poor; in the productive ages of 25-34, African women are 27% more likely to live in extreme poverty than men.
The Agricultural Systems Change initiative in Rwanda, Kenya, and Ethiopia, led by One Acre Fund in partnership with Landesa, is working to reduce extreme poverty, protect the environment, and shape a more gender-equitable future in rural Africa. Rwanda, Kenya, and Ethiopia collectively hold more than one-fourth of all African smallholder farmers. This market-based initiative strives for sustained improvements in whole-of-country agricultural systems by aligning and enhancing the incentives and capacities of public and private actors towards a pro-poor, pro-women farmer system.
Three productivity factors – improved seeds, trees, and land – enable smallholder farmers to increase productivity and improve their long-term incomes. Critically, these factors also enable smallholders to build resilience to the impacts of climate change via adaptation and mitigation, collectively African farmers can become a grassroots force against climate change and protect the environment.
Across all of the above, improved gender norms are front and center to ensure Africa’s agricultural advancement is more inclusive and pro-women. In the strategy proposed, One Acre Fund and Landesa are committed to being gender-transformative by designing programs to have equitable access for both men and women. The initiative, in partnership with the Government, will also design and implement campaigns aimed at shifting social norms and leveling the playing field for women farmers.
In aggregate, across all six country-intervention combinations, this initiative will enable 3.5 million unique farmer families (encompassing 17 million individuals) to generate an average of 20%+ increase in their annual household farm profit by 2025.
One Acre Fund is advancing smallholder farmers along the pathway to prosperity by supplying them with the financing and training to grow more food and earn more money. Instead of giving handouts, they invest in farmers for sustained, tangible outcomes for millions. The core purpose of One Acre Fund’s work is to generate people-level outcomes and results you can eat.
Find out more about One Acre Fund (OAF)
Landesa champions and works to secure inclusive, gender-equitable land rights – a critical lever for creating opportunity, improving social justice, and growing livelihoods for people living in rural areas. Their work is founded on a systems change approach that delivers change at scale, creating the conditions for millions to enjoy greater prosperity, stability, and dignity.
“Our work with Co-Impact has been a true game-changer because it’s allowed us the opportunity to step back on our direct program impact to see how we can contribute to shifting agricultural systems in a way that impacts all farmers in the markets where we operate. We have a unique opportunity to leverage the enormous existing potential and years of close partnerships with governments and private actors to address current market failures, advocate for farmer-centered policy change that elevates the voice of farmers, replicate systems-focused interventions that are backed by real evidence, and ensure that women farmers are equally empowered with tools that advance their economic prosperity. As a result of this work, we’ve increased focus on system changes that drive towards a more gender-equitable agricultural system that levels the playing field for women farmers.”
Doreen Ndishabandi – Rwanda Chief of Staff & Director of Government Relations at One Acre Fund
