New partnership to boost productivity, ownership, and income for Kenyan and Ugandan fruit farmers

By Henoch Derbew

2 February 2010 [MediaGlobal]: On 20 January, a four-year, $11.5 million dollar partnership through grants from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Coca-Cola was launched to double the incomes of more than 50,000 small fruit farmers in Kenya and Uganda. Through this grant and its programs, farmers will be able to reap the benefits of the global market by improving and expanding their production of mangos and passion fruit for locally-sold Coca-Cola fruit juices.

TechnoServe, the project’s implementing partner, has worked with the private sector to promote sustainable development since its founding in 1968. The US-based nonprofit has been in east Africa for almost 40 years and this most recent collaboration with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Coca-Cola – which contributed $7.5 million and $4 million, respectively – seeks to continue achieving mutually beneficial outcomes for multinational corporations and local suppliers.

Fruit vendors sell sour oranges and passion fruit in a market in Uganda’s capital, Kampala. (Photo credit: Creative Commons.)

TechnoServe’s Director of Marketing and Communications Luba Vangelova explained that helping farmers break into Coca-Cola’s fruit juice supply chain – which presently relies on fruit juice concentrate imports – will occur through the transfer of “technical expertise, business consulting support, and training that will enable farmers to implement quality control standards, [and] develop agricultural best practices to boost productivity.” Ultimately, local mango and passion fruit farmers will be able to satisfy the supply needs of Coca-Cola. Training will also be extended to government officials to support these efforts, as well as to local fruit juice manufacturers and processors, with the help of Coca-Cola.

Another major goal of the project is the creation of “farmer-based organizations.” Such groups are essential in African agriculture as “middlemen” regularly swindle cash-crop farmers across the continent. Vangelova pointed out that, based on TechnoServe’s work in the region, farmgate prices [products’ prices when sold at the farm] can increase by up to 30 percent where farmer groups bypassed middlemen and were directly connected to markets. Vangelova explained that this shows the importance of farmers having “lasting networks for pooling resources [to save] on transaction costs,” both during the project and beyond its four-year timeframe.

Monitoring and evaluation will play a crucial role too. Conclusions will continually be drawn from periodic data collection, reporting, and regular analyses of how well targets have been reached. For example, a randomized sample – both by gender and region –of about 20 farmers will provide ongoing results describing their opinions of the project and how it has impacted them. More long-term metrics will include how many farmers join “producer business groups” and how many switch to “improved” varieties of seeds in the first year. Social, environmental, and gender-based indicators – the latter of which is measured by the participation of women in decision-making – will also be used to gauge the overall results. All this information will lead to adjustments to be made during project.

With improved quality and productivity, Vangelova envisions a stronger and scalable supply chain that will allow farmers to start working with other multinationals in the future. TechnoServe and Coca-Cola both expect that this year’s harvest will benefit from the project and fruit from local farmers will be used in locally-sold Coca-Cola products by the end of 2010.

Scaling up this project and transporting it to other regions has garnered great interest and plans for duplication elsewhere in Africa are already underway. Vangelova explained that since “studies have shown that economic success in poor countries can positively impact neighboring countries,” the benefits to these farmers are expected to carry over across the five-nation East African Community (EAC) – consisting of Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, and Burundi – as well. Lastly, Vangelova noted the benefits at the household level, explaining that the immediate impacts of increased income will allow families “to pay for school fees, purchase bicycles for transportation, and expand agricultural capabilities.”