WidEnergy Africa Ltd is a women led company, dedicated to the last mile distribution of clean, reliable, and affordable energy solutions. Their mission is to build an Africa, where every woman and girl has access to affordable clean energy, water whilst contributing to a real reduction in the Zambian deforestation rate.

Just half of Zambia’s population has access to grid electricity and WidEnergy aim to introduce solar powered Containerized Hubs that purify water, provide energy through battery charging, and improve access Wi-Fi to the underserved rural communities in Zambia. With one of the highest deforestation rates in Africa, delivering clean energy and clean drinking water improves not only health and education but generates savings for families whilst reducing their carbon footprint by replacing kerosene lamps, firewood, and candles with solar energy.

WidEnergy’s ‘Women in Energy for Water Hub’ project will be installed in off grid rural areas. Each of the Six Off Grid Boxes will serve 400 households with up to 12KWh of energy, 10,000 litres of purified water, 1GB of WIFI and 15KW of energy storage capacity. WidEnergy will also be offering Family Kits tha include includes LED bulbs, a mobile phone adapter, and a lithium battery pack and jerry-can for water collection. WidEnergy’s Family Kits will reduce these costs by around €80 per family per annum.

Palm trees take around 30 years for a tree to mature to the point where its leave and palm sap can be harvested. In recent years palm trees have been cut down and exported to neighbouring countries to make furniture.

Signatures of Asia, a company specializing in trading agricultural products including rice, sugar and pepper, was aware of the issue, and began exploring the possibility of exporting palm sugar at a larger scale to international markets.  To better manage the whole supply chain, SOA needs to involve all stakeholders. SOA planned to set up a company that everyone can be part of it. Major stakeholders would be SOA, farmers’ associations, an NGO and international buyers. SOA will take a greater part in the venture and will bring knowledge in palm sugar processing and packaging, as well as the channelling of palm sugar to international markets. Meanwhile, cooperatives and NGOs will play the role of farmer trainers and manage quality control. 

Achieving large scale sugar production will provide tremendous benefits for all stakeholders in the supply chain, as well as promoting Cambodian exports to international markets. With the existing 2 million palm trees, Cambodia can produce palm sugar to the value of US$300,000,000 every year. Under this project, we aim to achieve 1200 tons of palm sugar exports and expect to create about 1300 new jobs, of which 50% will be women in the rural areas.

Tulip Addis Water Filter Company has been working in the Ethiopian market since July 2011, importing and supplying water filter kits to communities throughout the country. As imported water filters are expensive and need a foreign currency for their importation, Tulip Addis has taken the initiative to manufacture the water filter kits locally, making them as affordable as possible for rural communities

Our company philosophy, “Excellence in Water Purification!” has been the essence of our success. Our mission is to serve the low-income population with no access to safe drinking water in Ethiopia, and our goal is to achieve and sustain improved health conditions in areas that lack clean drinking water.

We work hard to make sure that our staff members, products, and processes are aligned to meet the demand of our customers through a transparent, high-quality business operation based on market mechanisms, and serve our customers with an efficient, innovative, and high-quality product through an excellent delivery system.

These challenges present an opportunity ChapChap Africa to accelerate the access and usage of appropriate, affordable financial services through digitization. Digitizing helps Chapchap overcome the costs and physical barriers that have beset otherwise valuable financial inclusion efforts. It offers the opportunity to rapidly scale up access to financial services using mobile phones. This also promotes women’s economic empowerment by facilitating greater account ownership, savings accumulation and increasing women’s economic participation.

ChapChap seeks to upscale this proven solution to mobile users, especially at the bottom of the pyramid, to drive adoption of digital payment. As an authorized digital payment agent of utilities, ChapChap earns huge discounts and sales commissions from utilities, Pay TV, banks and telecom companies for all payments made; these transactional commissions gained are then shared with users. The model involves sharing 80% of transactional profits with the users in its network, making our users partners in development, driving both ownership, loyalty and usage of its services. This wealth distribution model will substantially increase income resilience and improve the quality of life for the extreme poor.

Mesafint Alebel Electrical Machines Manufacturing is producing the first ever locally manufactured solar power pumps for use in both irrigation and home electrification. This new technology will initially target farmers in the Amhara region and replace the widespread use of diesel pumps for agriculture and energy purposes. This sustainable and affordable alternative will significantly reduce the incurred by farmers’ from using diesel fuel.

The company its aiming for an increase in production capacity from their current 250 pumps to 3,500 pumps in 2022 by reaching 4000 smallholder farmers. In addition, they plan to provide access to solar lighting for 9200 people living in poverty.

13 new job opportunities will be created at company level and lead to significant growth in marketing linkages with suppliers, marketers, distributors, and production staff. Access to electric cooking will contribute to positive health benefits, particularly for women, whom have traditionally been largely responsible for domestic work and exposed to greater levels of indoor air pollution.

Afriseed is an emerging company producing improved seed varieties cereals and legumes. The chief tenet behind the company is using local and regional materials and talent to develop and commercialise locally and regionally adaptable, flavourful seed varieties for access by Zambian farmers.

Afriseed aims to scale up provision of agricultural solutions that address smallholder farm productivity, increase incomes and climate resilience. The intervention is driven by an opportunity to help farmers diversify from maize monocropping to higher value nutritious crops, such as beans, while helping farmers to grow nutritious biofortified orange maize.

Afriseed currently works with 800 smallholder farmers in the soybean, groundnut, cowpeas, sorghum, beans and maize value chains. Seed sales volumes oscillate between 1,500MT and 2,000MT reaching over 100,000 smallholder farmers countrywide.

15,000 small hold farmers already access Afriseed climate smart seed varieties. These adaptable seed varieties are high yielding, drought tolerant and resistant to diseases and field pests and will increase crop yield and incomes for farmers by about 30 per cent.

In addition, rural communities are underserved and setting up a last mile rural distribution centres through mobile shops will improve access to inputs in these communities while at the same time giving SGL an increased market share.

Mukusu Motors & Properties aims to increase outreach, improve operational efficiency and enhance equitable access to the benefits that technology and digital tools bring to farmers and other value chain actors. Through an automated collective hiring centre, tractors and other modern farm tools with skilled operators can be shared at affordable rates in any part of the country.

Devices and sensors will be mounted on tractors to collect data on all farm operations, allowing farmers to practice data driven agriculture for increased yields and income. Digital marketplaces will be created for farmers to sell directly to agro-processors for increased profit with the aim of reducing exploitation by middlemen.

Economies of scale will be created through linking farmers to tractor owners near them, creating the possibility of reducing hire fees per acre from €30 to €25.

Mukusu Motors & Properties has reached some 3600 Smallholder farmers, of which 40 per cent are women. However, during peak harvesting and planting seasons the company has not been able to meet the demand for tractor hiring services, which has forced them to decline orders or make referrals to other tractor owners which has costs them a great opportunity to generate income. Through investment they will be able to meet this demand and further drive their expansion across the nation.

Uzima Chicken aims to make over 2 million rural low-income people in Uganda healthier and wealthier by scaling up the distribution of SASSO, an improved poultry breed. Uzima Chicken Uganda’s model is adopted from sister companies in Ethiopia and Rwanda, both of which are profitable enterprises, selling 20 million and 1 million SASSO in 2019 respectively.

Despite the large market potential in Uganda, competitors offer ill-suited products that are often limited to peri-urban districts whilst they also offer minimal training or after-sales support. This market landscape presents an exciting opportunity for Uzima to address the underserved smallholder farmer market.

The company’s sustainability hinges on offering smallholders a profitable business opportunity combined with the requisite technical support and extension services. A Farmer raising a flock of 10 birds can expect to make 65 EUR in profits, and to date 60% of customers plan to reinvest their profits into their poultry businesses.

Their business model supports a diverse set of women and youth entrepreneurs who, using a small amount of space and working capital, can build a prosperous poultry business.

Jemma Agro Tech was founded in 2013 to produce and supply high yield, certified seeds for selected crops for smallholder farmers. Over seven years their production of red onion seeds has increased from 400kg to 2500kg. By 2020 the company was working with 25 smallholder out-grower farmers, the company now sells its improved, certified, red onion seed to some 34,900 farmers.

Jemma are now increasing their seed production land area from 5 to 35 hectares; this will see their annual red onion seed capacity rise from its current 2500kg to 28000kg by the end of 2022. This expansion will see another 120 farmers of potato seed, using the out-grower model, producing 1,050,000 kg of potato seeds.

This expansion will increase annual revenue from its current 75,581 Euros to 1,391,755 Euro by the end of 2022. This will create 285 new job opportunities, of which 123 will be women, with 25 people directly employed by the company in addition to the 240 smallholder farmers employed as out-growers, suppliers or salespeople.

Our project is “creating an e-market and information sharing platform” to curb the farmers’, as well as AMK’s, constraints. It will also contribute to AMKs vision and mission of “delivering appropriate and viable microfinance services to a large number of poor people to improve their livelihood options” and help to better mitigate risk.

The e-market platform is a web and mobile app-based platform on which anyone can freely register. The users can post to sell or buy products or create a forum on a specific topic when seeking technical advice related to agriculture. The platform is primarily a shared knowledge-based app which offer users a pool of up to date market information including price, an agricultural calendar, a list of input suppliers and produce buyers, a weather information, and a one stop shop for managing their business online. With further investment, we plan to integrate our user business management, online payments and financial services, loan applications, deposits, and financial management tools.

In Uganda the Sanitation Subsector is largely dominated by NGOs and Government Authorities with little involvement by Private actors. The effect of this is that the public often do not respect the sanitation infrastructure. Sanitation Africa’s initiative is to adopt a business model where the toilet and related services are traded like any other consumer commodity.

Sanitation Africa constructs toilets and provides installation, handwashing facilities and pit emptying in the Greater Kampala, Greater Masaka regions and in the East of Uganda. Areas in these regions include slums, where there is limited or no access for cesspool emptying, an acute shortage of land, land ownership issues, and areas where inhabitants are accustomed to open defecation. The company has carefully designed technologies that can answer these challenges whilst we work to ensure a healthier population. What’s more Sanitation Africa sees this as an opportunity for fighting poverty, especially among Uganda’s youth, through providing employment opportunities along the sanitation chain, from capture to emptying, transportation, treatment and reuse.

Since 2012 Eco Group have been actively engaged in the manufacturing, marketing, sale and distribution of energy saving stoves. Eco stove is not simply an off the shelf item, our stoves are embedded with a DC fan to supply oxygen to the volcanic rocks that are used in the cooking process and it is powered by a solar panel and battery.

The Eco Group company manufactures Eco Rock Stoves and assembles household solar kits for energy-poor households in Uganda. The Eco Rock Stove is a branded product developed with the primary objective of increasing access to clean energy for both off-grid households and businesses. The Eco Stove technology has the added benefits of lighting, mobile phone charging, FM radio and much more. This patented technology was inspired by a desire to produce a more energy efficient cookstove whose design meets real world cooking challenges and provides a real solution to institutions and everyday persons. The Eco Stoves are designed for large consumers of wood and charcoal, which contribute to the rate of deforestation.

The WE Venture initiative will produce safe water based on the key principles of water quality, accessibility, and sustainability. Our system treats water that is available locally with low cost infrastructure. Clean water is then delivered to homes in piped networks as a 24 hour service to guarantee water quality.

Accessibility begins with offering safe water at an affordable price for poor people. Our price is set in an agreement with the Ministry of Industry and Handicrafts to establish the right balance between affordability and the necessity of covering operation costs and profits on initial investment. Accessibility also requires undertaking significant training and social marketing initiatives to foster changes in behaviour related to hygiene and safe water consumption.

Alviol has been engaged in commercial trading, the hospitality industry and medical supplies and consultation services for over 5 years. While general trading continues to be the core business of Alviol, a lifetime dream of providing clean and affordable lighting solutions to rural communities on a commercial basis has seen the company diversify into off-grid solar energy supply.

Over the past four years Alviol has imported and distributed over 30,000 units of high quality solar home systems and solar lighting kits to hundreds of off-grid rural communities in Ethiopia. Alviol’s customers have benefitted and continue to benefit from our generous warranty scheme, excellent maintenance and uninterrupted after sales services.

To provide high quality services to maximise customer satisfaction is our ultimate goal by introducing technologies with a diverse staff that is, well trained, trustworthy, enthusiastic and team oriented.

Malnutrition affects millions of Ugandans and is particularly devastating for women, babies, and children. 45% of child deaths in Uganda is attributed to malnutrition. Stunting, iron deficiency anaemia, iodine deficiency, and low birth weight will cost Uganda more than 19 trillion Ugandan Shillings (US$7.7 billion) in lost productivity by 2025.

Yellow Star has leveraged value addition for access to nutrition and livelihood development. The business model ensures that all parties involved, from farmer-suppliers to distributors, are an integral part in the business’ growth. Yellow Star works cohesively with farmers imparting knowledge through training on good agronomic farming practices for sustainable green farming and produce market access. Yellow Star has also prioritized inclusive nutrition access for all among its core values to address the malnutrition problem, especially in indigenous low-income communities. Catalysed by the participation of low income people, especially women and youth, in the sale and distribution of these organic food products constitutes a significant part in the value chain.

260 Brands is a Zambian food producer of Corn and Soya based products. To widen their product lines 260 Brands are introducing soy milk to the Zambian market. This healthy alternative to dairy milk is part of the company’s strategy to deliver nutritious products to Zambia.

The 260 Brands objective is to leverage their current capacity and strength in the value chain to ensure their soya milk is priced competitively to dairy milk, making it affordable to all. Soya processesing produces 3 times less greenhouse gas emissions and requires 10 times less land and water than dairy production, significantly reducing their carbon footprint.

Made from 100 per cent locally sourced crops, the company works directly with 1,300 of 260 Bransa current small holder farmers, this will be expanded through an out-grower scheme to 500 new farmers, ensuring them a guaranteed market for soya beans.

260 Brands also aims to strengthen the local Fast-Moving Consumer Goods and manufacturing industry in Zambia, creating construction jobs and a new factory workforce. It will distribute its product to micro, small and medium enterprise sized distributors to support small business growth.

Eastern Agriculture Development Company (EADC) is introducing readymade precooked bean products to the market. These offer convenience and cost savings through saved cooking time, fuel and water, while contributing to environmental conservation and increased farmer incomes.

Dry beans are already established in Uganda and are the most consumed bean product on the market, so with the introduction of precooked-dehydrated beans, the company expects consumption to increase because of the social economic benefits they offer.

An agri-business social enterprise, EADC’s core business is the processing and trading of super-rich, bio-fortified food with the social development aim of increasing farmer’s incomes and addressing Uganda’s vitamin A, Iron and Zinc nutritional deficiencies. The company already works with exporters of both local and orange fleshed sweet potatoes and beans and is engaged with a network of 3000 local farmers.

This new and innovative product will open yet more marketing channels. Increasing the supply of high-quality produce by farmers and the processing of further novel products that will widen the revenue base for EADC. EADC’s consumers currently purchase 130 tons of the pre-cooked beans, and these sales are expected to almost double with consumers purchasing 241 metric tons by 2022.

Anega Energies Manufacturing is aiming to build a strong market position in the biomass energy market in Ethiopia with a business model that includes improved cookstoves, fuel pellets and a unique biochar by-back scheme, where customers receive an equal mass of charcoal returned in new pellet fuel.

Their mission is to help improve, maintain and protect the health and natural resources of all Ethiopians through replacing inefficient traditional open three stone or point stoves with their improved cookstoves, alongside an affordable and healthier fuel for households that is made from waste products that help reduce the unsustainable harvesting of firewood from forests.

In helping to create smoke free and healthy kitchens in Ethiopia, the project will help families and small businesses save 65% in fuel cost while also reducing cooking time by at least 50%.

Colleting and dumping the waste is not a solution to waste management systems. Reductions from source and reuse and recycling can all minimize the effect waste has on water systems. Dream Light waste management continues to recycle solid biodegradable waste into compost and into manufactured briquettes.

Looking to increase our recycling efficiency by producing marketable compost to farmers, we reduce the contamination of water resources. Maintaining these water sources means potentially saving thousands of people from illness. We take this an important step further and substitute charcoal produced from wood with our briquettes, reducing the effects of smoke inhalation, reducing deforestation and helping to reduce the use of hazardous artificial fertilizers.

We pay great attention to gender equality. In our 12 years of operations over 60% of our workers are women. Similarly, many of our customers are women who will now be protected from the ill effects off  smoke inhalation and see a reduction in the time they spend gathering wood better enabling them to participate in financial activities.

The vision of the company is to manufacture and sell our Injera Biogas Stove and composite Mitad at commercially affordable prices. Our company strategy is focused on being inclusive, preventing indoor air pollution and solving just some of the many environmental problems that face Ethiopia.

Ethiopia has constructed around 15,000 biogas plants, and a further 36,000 plants’ construction has been agreed upon over the next five years, with plans to reach up to 70,000. This is a huge opportunity for commercializing our products, as many of these biogas plants would serve our Injera baking technologies. Commercializing our products will also contribute to the social impact of job opportunity creation, a 70% reduction in the daily workload of women and increase the income of low-income persons participating in the commercialization process.

African Power Initiative is a renewable energy company working to sustainably produce biodiesel fuel as an environmentally friendly and cheaper option to diesel fuel in Uganda. The company vision is ‘A region self-sufficient in the production of green energy’. API’s project purpose is to provide a clean, competitive and high-quality energy option, while contributing to the creation of job opportunities, climate change mitigation and economic development.

Other value chain products include briquettes that substitute for firewood and charcoal, thereby reducing deforestation, crude glycerine, a substitute for imported glycerine, and seedcake which can be converted into an organic fertilizer that improves soil productivity and agricultural yields.

API’s ambition is to scale their production of biodiesel from 4000 litres per month to at least 20,000 litres per day. To achieve this the company will establish a reliable out grower scheme in which over 10,000 farmers will be recruited to grow and supply oilseeds to API.

On the consumers side, the product will provide a readily available source of energy, free from noxious gases that will save costs and provide electricity in areas where they still lack access. Its usage will further contribute to reducing emissions of greenhouse gasses and reduction of deforestation.

Shayashone aims to increase sales and outreach of our PICS bags; a chemical free storage technology that keeps grain and seed free of insect infestation for over two years. The PICS bags generate value for local youth in the supply chain through creating job opportunities and income from sales and for smallholder farmers through improved household food security and increased income, women benefit from replacing the tedious processing and fermentation of Enset through our simple, labour and water saving technological alternative. Meanwhile, Increased sales means increased revenue for Shayashone as we reach more low-income customers.

Shayashone will recruit 120 youths and train them as resellers of PICS bags. These youths and over 250,000 smallholder farmers, of which are 60% women, will be our direct beneficiaries.

Indirectly, we expect that a further 3 million people will have raised awareness on the adverse impact of chemical use to protect against weevils and possibly turn to PICS bags for storage. What’s more PICS bags are already being manufactured and sold in 23 countries across Africa and Asia, and over the last three years, 280,000 bags have already been sold. Evidence from various sources suggests PICS bags could be the next revolutionary safe grain storage product for millions of farmers in Ethiopia.

We believe this will lead to us selling 19,400 ACE units over the next 5 years, this will impact an estimated 97,000 people. These sales will not only benefit the company but, by current projections, avert 31 early deaths from exposure to toxic cook smoke, see a 310,400 ton reduction in CO2 emissions over the lifetimes of the stoves, and reduce wood fuel consumption by some 73,642 tons compared to traditional Cambodian stoves.

By forming the joint venture MakaPads with the German non-profit Impacc, Technology for Tomorrow aims to extend affordable menstrual hygiene health and employment opportunities throughout rural Uganda. Their sustainably produced sanitary pads are built on an inclusive business model that empowers women and girls.

Production and sales are organized into a network of franchised production centres where rural women are trained in production and sales techniques. Scaling up will give 90,000 low income women and girls with access to biodegradable MakaPads be financed by the establishment of a micro-franchise investment facility promoted by fund-raising on the European donation market.

T4T’s marketing approach focuses on training on menstrual hygiene management to break down the negative barriers associated with MHM and promote recognition of menstrual hygiene issues. On-the-job training skills training for youths in the production of MakaPads provides employment for low income people, that would otherwise struggle to find a meaningful source of income. Unlike other globally produced menstrual hygiene products, 65% of the price of the MakaPads are for the wages paid, increasing workers’ wages from $1 a day to $5 a day.

Husk is pioneering a circular economic model to transforming agricultural waste into carbon-based fertilizers so that rice and horticulture farmers in Cambodia can increase their yields by 5 to 30 per cent. HUSK’s carbon-based fertilisers and natural pesticides for smallholders are produced through the upcycling of agricultural byproducts to a biochar that improves soil fertility, increase yields and sequesters carbon. In 2020, their rollout of Carbon Based Fertilizer and Rice Husk Vinegar for plant biostimulation was widely embraced by horticulture farmers. HUSK now wish to commercialize these two innovative products through sales to horticulture and rice farmers. Currently, half of their production is sold to the rice mill cooperative to be distributed among its members and is mostly used for vegetable production.

Increasing their market share with rice farmers will allow them to increase their sales to the largest segment of farmers in Cambodia. Rice is consumed by 60% of the world’s population and sales are growing, by reducing the chemical inputs and offering improved quality products, farmers will be better able to navigate the road of international compliance and enter a global market expected to increase to $313 Billion by 2025.

Raising Gabdho is a social enterprise that aims to accelerate clean, accessible, and sustainable energy for vulnerable communities through innovative products, approaches to behavioural change and benchmarking good practices. Their business model is based on the belief that a mixed solution can accelerate clean energy uptake to reduce the effects of energy poverty and ultimately bridge the gap of energy aid poverty.

The company offers clean cooking solutions including charcoal briquettes, energy-saving cookstoves, LPG and cooking baskets, underpinned by capacity building activities targeting women, youths, and refugees.

Ugandan communities are plagued by the irregular supply and distribution of clean energy products. Through their value chain innovations, Raising Gabdho aims to tap into this market gap, employing an additional 25 low-income people to reach their target of at least 5,000 household and 50 school consumers. This will provide 750 distributors with increased income opportunities, and in doing so increase their distribution and company turnover.

Raising Gabdho is scaling up briquette production, distribution and adoption through improvements in aggregated sourcing, biodegradable packaging, and improvements in, and the scaling of, distribution and delivery through local distribution networks. They are also improving ICT adoption using the Zeed application, a mobile app that will be used throughout the value chain to improve business processing including inventory management, distribution support, monitoring performance of vendors and end-users, as well as to optimize payments and business decisions.

The use of quality seed is a major component of increased yields in crop production. Whilst farmers understand the need to plant quality seeds to increase crop yields, a lack of affordability and a poor understand of market demand can hamper their efforts. East West Seed Cambodia are looking to change this dynamic through expanding their outreach to initially, improve the productivity and livelihoods of some 14,400 smallholder farmers in Cambodia through affordably priced improved quality seeds.

This will have the concomitant effect of establishing a healthy agro-input market. As importantly, the company is promoting their seeds through a focus on showcasing and sharing technical information on sustainable and profitable production systems that includes information for farmers on climate change adaptation techniques. Through their training of smallholder farmers, promoters, agro-input dealers, and market traders and wholesalers, East West Seeds will be strengthening their ability to invest in supply chains. This improved knowledge from on-farm skills training, will see farmers better able to optimize their own production and better address market needs.

Nutridense agro-processing will implement the first pro-poor oats for human consumption value chain in Ethiopia. Ethiopia currently imports 6 million USD of breakfast cereals annually. A local solution, tapping into an untouched market in Ethiopia, affordable nutritive oat meals will be made available to all. This will provide opportunities for increased income along the inclusive value chain. To date 38,760 consumers have accessed Nutridense’s nutritious milk packs, of which 20,400 were people living in poverty.

In translating local research results into benefits for local consumers, smallholders and the environment, the project sources raw materials from people living in poverty, this gives smallholder farmers the benefits of a guaranteed market outlet, income, and employment.

The company works along the value chain from production of inputs through agro-processing by the company to distribution and marketing. In the proposed up-scaling phase, on-the-job training on raw material quality assurance will be offered with a priority to low-income women who will be given the opportunity to develop new skills as company employees.

The company, in collaboration with Ethiopian Institute of Agricultural Research and Chacha City Administration, is planning to establish a contract farming system to encourage farmers to cultivate oats that will allow Nutridense to guaranty its  raw materials supply from the surrounding farmers without interruption.

At Sano Beverages we are focused on producing affordable and nutritious beverages and juices. These are especially important in Ethiopia as they can be consumed on days of fasting – Ethiopian Christians are prohibited from consuming any animal products, including eggs and butter, for half the days in a year. Ethiopians are poor, with little access to healthy affordable drinks. Indeed, our feasibility study has shown that most of the beverages and juices available on the Ethiopian market are either very expensive or made with imported ingredients.

Sano Beverages will open a market to farmers for new crops that offer them higher yields and revenues. We will achieve this through year-round supply contract and pay fair trade prices for their crops. Our interest is the guarantee of a year-round supply of our ingredients.

On the demand side, it gives a population with lower purchasing power access to affordable healthy drinks of a local origin. Healthy, in this sense is that our drinks contain natural extracts from local crops, with lower sugar levels than conventional drinks, all prepared to the most stringent quality and hygiene standards.

Insecurity of land tenure is one of the major challenges to the development of these communities. As the economist, Hernando De Soto, said that ‘With titles, shares and property laws, people could suddenly go beyond looking at their assets as they are – houses used for shelter – to thinking about what they could be – things like security for credit or feel secure to invest in long-term irrigation systems.” Medeem’s solution is to provide land tenure security, as the foundation on which sustainable and diversified agriculture development hinges. The main project will entail providing land rights documentation for people in Zambia and helping unlock agriculture and development by the data and security that land rights afford.

With the majority of land in Zambia being customary owned, the commercial and social impact opportunities are significant. Millions of undocumented households and parcels of land provide a meaningful social and commercial case for a private sector approach to documenting land rights.

Winsol is an established manufacturer of innovative renewable energy products. The company began manufacturing portable solar mobile chargers to solve the long distances travelled to charge phones. As we began to get request from our customer for more solar home services, we began assembling them from imported raw materials.

In Ethiopia 70% of the population lack access to electricity, and even less so to clean energy. The primary light source comes from Kerosene which releases black carbon emissions, a significant contributor to global warming. Although there is a great demand for solar energy, conventional solutions often come from imported products from China without warranty or after sales services.

By building a local production capacity for solar products, Winsol Green Power Engineering reduces costs by around 30%, providing an affordable alternative. The innovation comprises of a solar home system generator with four lamps, a mobile charger, and a radio, all manufactured through recycled plastic materials. To make it even more accessible for the low-income people of Ethiopia, the solution is offered as pay-as-you-go, allowing customers to pay on a credit basis.

Lyly Food produces healthy snacks targeted at poor consumers and primary and high school students in Cambodia.  Lyly food industries cooperates with 30 input suppliers to access raw materials to produce 10 tons per day of our snacks and cooperates with 100 wholesalers and 300 local retailers to supply around 4 million local consumers and 11 international companies across 9 countries. Lyly work closely with smallholder producers, producer groups and agricultural cooperatives to get at least 16 tons of safe local fresh fruit per day through contract farming.

This will supply LyLy with the inputs needed to produce dry fruit and vegetables at the rate of 1 ton per day, a 20 % market share by 2021 LyLy will be producing 4 tons per day for local and international demand.

Low income persons, both suppliers and consumers of our product, will be LyLy’s main beneficiaries. At scale this project will reach at least 1,500 households or 3,000 poor people and 2,300 market side distributors. LyLy offers 10 to 20% higher prices than the market price for each type of fruit, meaning that producers will increase their incomes by some 150 to 200 USD per year. 3800 households, or 15,200 people, will receive improved incomes through direct access to jobs and skills.  This project will convert farmers’ practices from unsafe chemical production techniques to natural fertilisers, benefitting both the farmers and their generations to come.

Utilising the trust they have built over their 15 years’ experience in the Cambodia energy sector, SOGE has been working with farmers to prototype a solar irrigation pump to replace expensive diesel pumps. This provides farmers with a sustainable clean energy solution that both saves money and lets them irrigate, and grow, rice all year round.

Farmers around Cambodia often use diesel water pumps to transfer water from lakes, rivers and other water sources to use for irrigation. This is an expensive and problematic solution with pumps often breaking down, making them expensive to maintain.

In recent years The Cambodian Ministry of Agriculture Forestry and Fisheries estimates that only half of farmers have access to irrigation and the Royal Government of Cambodia is now actively supporting irrigation projects to improve food security at home and bolster rice production for export to a global market forecasted to reach $313 Billion by 2025.

Working in low-income, poverty-stricken areas where farmers cannot afford the cost of fuel required to irrigate their land using diesel powered generators, SOGE aims to initially give access to some 350 smallholder farmers, irrigating their 1000 hectares of paddy, doubling their harvest, and bringing much needed revenue to rural, often poverty-stricken areas. As incomes and local expenditures rise, so too will the ongoing social impact for families and communities in each target area.

HahuJobs is an eco-system of inter-linked platforms and services that can be accessed separately or jointly. Our solution effectively connects individuals with work and training opportunities. Our eco system enables sustained linkage between jobseekers, employers, educators and trainers.

In Ethiopia, a lot of youth join the workforce with low-skills. With job boards and newspapers being the main outlets for vacancy announcements, job seekers are both faced with the high costs of job searching and have difficulty demonstrating their skills to recruiting companies.

HahuJobs’s digital platform enables transparent and efficient labour sourcing. Registered job seekers have their CVs entered into the system and are paired with employment opportunities that fit their skills right away. In addition, the system facilitates labour law compliance by capturing grievances and discriminatory or deceptive recruitment practices. The system has also enabled access to real time data for stakeholders which they can use to perform different analysis which can impact working conditions.

TruLuv Trading is a dynamic female-led agribusiness founded in 2016. The company make healthy foods with ingredients sustainably sourced from local smallholder farmers and crafted by Ethiopian women. The company’s vision is for TruLuv to lead the way in improving every Ethiopian’s nutritional status while supporting environmental sustainability and developing a team of dynamic and creative women employees.

To date Truluv’s tasty and healthy snacks have been targeted at the mid-to high-income Ethiopians, expatriates and visiting tourists. They are now seeking to provide new healthy and tasty snack bars at more affordable prices to low-income urban Ethiopians. Truluv’s aim now is to sell higher volumes of tasty, nutritious, and healthy snacks at an affordable price to an initial 20,000 urban people living in poverty. Tapping into this new customer group aims to operate with supplies from 50 smallholder farmers that will give the company access to a larger target market that will allow them to reduce production costs, increase profitability and build a more efficient business while developing a more sustainable supply chain. 

Created as a solution to address the rural populations unwillingness to start aquaculture businesses, Siavonga Breams aims to create a thriving fish farming community free of poverty through an all-inclusive, sustainable, and ecosystem-friendly aquaculture enterprise diversified on the aquaculture value chain. The Siavonga Breams Multi-Purpose Cooperative is a mother body to which individuals, rural cooperatives, and companies affiliate for mutual benefits.

Aqua gardens will be comprised of a network of floating fish cages that, whilst owned by different groups, will benefit from the shared security, transport, training, and market linkages. 360 low-income fish farmers will benefit from improved livelihoods and contribute to food security, health, and increased income levels along the value chain.

The aqua garden community will be made up of 400 women’s groups who account for 80 per cent of the fish industry in Zambia. Grouping small scale fish farmers in one location provides increased market for the product with minimal costs and decreased logistical requirements for delivery as well as helping to prevent, control, and reduce theft, resulting in increased yields. Successful implementation, will generate goodwill, easing the up scaling throughout the country.

The market potential for good quality Cambodian agricultural products is high. In 2017 the value of global organic food was nearly USD 90 billion. Cambodia had a share of less than USD 10m of this market, in comparison, Thailand was enjoying more than USD 80m. A lot can be done to increase Cambodia’s market share and it all begins at the farms, by building linkages to a strong supply chain.

Cambodian Agriculture Cooperative Corporation is a pioneer in the Public-Private-Producer-Partnership concept. CACC’s goal is to increase farmers’ incomes by as much as 20% compared to typical farm gate returns. CACC do this by engaging smallhold farmers to operate within a sustainable and ethical value chain and by providing best practice solutions to farmers from pre-planting to post-harvest improvements. Primarily we seek to create stable, long term supply chains that depart from typical ‘farm gate’ transactions involving middlemen and brokers which usually leaves farmers with the lowest prices. In a market downturn, this has devastating economic effects on the farming community. 

In this closed loop value chain, backed by ensued off-take and premium prices for rice, cashew nuts and cassava, CACC is raising incomes for more than 50,000 farmers (52% women) by 20%.