In Kenya, A Rural Entrepreneur Helps Young People Find Work

Farming and Entrepreneurship transformed Rosaline’s life, so now she’s helping young men and women from her community do the same.

Rosalina Siama, based in Western Kenya, joined iDE in 2023 and has launched successful agricultural and business ventures, including soy production, creating jobs for local youth and supplying nutritious food to schools.

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Cultivating Confidence With Potatoes in Central Ethiopia

Transforming communities from the ground up through financial empowerment and agricultural entrepreneurship

Without fair opportunities, rural women face deepening poverty, limited job prospects, and financial dependence. This inequality hinders community growth. By offering upskilling, financial literacy, and sustainable farming knowledge, we can empower them to achieve self-reliance and long-term resilience.

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Employee Immersion Experience Brings Deeper Understanding of the Importance of Corporate Partnership

Nine employees from The Toro Company participated in an immersive experience in Zambia for an opportunity to learn and engage with iDE programs in the field.

Corporate partners like The Toro Company play an important role in iDE’s ability to create an impact in its programs around the world. This immersion in Zambia gave nine employees a chance to see first-hand the value of their company’s partnership.

In Rural Kenya, Winfred Builds Better Business from Maize Shelling

For Winfred, entrepreneurial success meant supporting farmers in her rural community.

With technical and business training, Winfred builds her business from the ground up to provide postharvest services and other agricultural support to farmers in her community.

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Mother of Seven Becomes Leader and Entrepreneur for Family and Community in Zambia

“My determination and hard work paid off after receiving support from iDE through capacity building as a Farm Business Advisor.”

Agness Ndililwa, a single mother of seven in Zambia, helped support her family by enrolling in a training program with iDE, which helped her develop business skills, connect with agricultural suppliers, and diversify her product range. Through partnerships with iDE and the 'Farm to Market Alliance,' she expanded her business, supported local farmers, and contributed to agricultural resilience in her community.

In Nepal, Earthworms Foster Entrepreneurship For Bimala

How organic waste is helping communities thrive in the Himalayas.

Bimala from Chisapani, Nepal, has transformed her family's life through an agricultural vermicomposting project. Now a successful entrepreneur, she supports her family and shares her agricultural knowledge with her community.

Growing a Business After Fleeing Conflict in Mozambique

Maiasa built a new life from a barren plot to support her family

After fleeing violence in 2020 and losing her father, 30-year-old Maiasa Nahoda Abdala resettled in Nacala, where she transformed her plot into a thriving source of income through resilient agricultural techniques learned from iDE's PROMARE project.

iDE project spices up earnings for Nepali entrepreneurs

To recover from the COVID shock, iDE clients in the agri-food value chain were supported with business training, loans and labor-saving machinery

With funding provided by the US Agency for International Development (USAID), the Cereal Systems Initiative for South Asia, targeted 8 million low income people in rural areas across India, Bangladesh and Nepal.

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Postharvest technologies provided by entrepreneurs benefit Kenyan farmers

Switching from manual to mechanized processing saves time and increases profits

The She Feeds Africa project, funded by Zinpro Corporation and the Anderson Foundation, provides women entrepreneurs with access to financing, tools, and training, equipping them to improve postharvest practices and incomes across Kenyan communities

Regenerative Agriculture Helps Nepali Farms Bloom

iDE is powering farmers to protect the environment using natural remedies

By intervening at critical entry points, iDE Nepal is working hard to promote the integration of traditional ecological knowledge with modern agricultural practices among last mile entrepreneurs and smallholder farmers.

Women economically empowered in three African countries

Women entrepreneurs deliver greater business results

The US$6.4 million ($8.5 million CAD) project, being implemented by iDE and funded by Global Affairs Canada, has been designed to enhance economic empowerment, well-being and inclusive growth by providing support to women involved in agricultural value chains.

Agricultural value chain bears fruit

How adopting a new crop helped boost incomes of Cambodian farmers

The World Bank says improving the performance of agricultural value chains in emerging countries like Cambodia will be crucial to ending poverty and hunger, boosting shared prosperity, and stewarding the world’s natural resources.

Seeing is believing for entrepreneurial Ghanaians

Farmers powered by successful agricultural project

Shei is one of 146 farmers powered by the successful project known as Accelerating Impact of Food Security (AIFS) – which is part of iDE’s broader Korsung agricultural initiative, which translates as “good farming practices” in local language, Dagbani – which ran between April 2021 and March 2022.

Sylhet’s Resilient Market Ecosystem

Bangladeshi Region Characterized by Sufi Shrines and a Severe Weather

This Sylhet market ecosystem map shows the location of more than 2,360 iDE-powered touchpoints – local business advisors, livestock service providers, agricultural collection points, sales agents, entrepreneurs and latrine producers – all engaging with market actors, communities, and individuals – spread across Sylhet.

Microloans Help Zambian Farmers Cover Their Nuts

iDE Works With Communities To Establish Catalytic Savings And Loans Groups

Tryness Nsofwa, 57, proudly inspects her field of groundnuts. She uproots a clump of pods from the damp, red earth and is pleased with what she sees. Cracking open a husk to reveal edible fruit inside, Tryness notes the nuts are well formed and plentiful. “It’s looking very nice,” she says of her crop. “I will keep some for my family and I will sell some.”

Nutrition Boosted By Income Generation in Bangladesh

Most households receiving training on poultry farming

Farhana Yeasmin, 24, remembers what it was like when her husband was the family’s sole earner. Because he was a day laborer and made little money, they struggled to even pay for basics. And if he couldn’t find work, the family sometimes skipped meals.

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Nepali Women Fetched Water Before Daybreak

But an iDE program now pipes it to their villages

Kamala Magar’s day began before dawn. The Nepali farmer would get up and walk miles in the cold to fetch water for her family. It would take her most of the morning to retrieve just one jar, which she’d use to make breakfast before setting out for more.

Adapting to climate change

The Farmer Resilience & Rebuilding Initiative in Mozambique

How iDE is helping smallholder farmers increase their resilience following both Cyclone Idai and the COVID-19 pandemic.

Expanding Nepal's Business Access to Improved Technologies for Agriculture (ENBAITA)

Post Project Sustainability, Impacts, and Food Security During the COVID-19 Crisis

Utilizing the ENBAITA networks is a proven and cost effective way to help Nepal agriculture to recover from COVID-19 and to re-invigorate trading and exchange between Nepal and India to support food security in Nepal.

Even remote farmers are threatened by COVID-19

Our usual support during the growing season has been hampered, or completely suspended in order to prevent the spread of the disease, and that’s why we’re trying new methods to help rural farmers.

Because FBAs are entrepreneurs who connect urban suppliers and buyers to rural smallholder farmers, they can be a powerful force in a time of crisis.

Students seek solutions for food preservation

Design students from the Colorado School of Mines develop context-oriented technology to strengthen the postharvest value chain in rural Mozambique

iDE works with university partners to explore technologies that promise to increase market options for fruit and vegetable farmers.

The Disaster That Wasn't

Building resilience to famine in Ethiopia

There wasn't a disaster in Ethiopia in 2016, although they had one of their worst famine years ever. What changed from the 1980s and what can we learn from that for the future?

New growth yields new hope

Lors Thmey social enterprise helps smallholder farmers improve the quality, quantity, and diversity of their production.

Lors Thmey operates as a business unit within iDE Cambodia with a mission to improve the economic resilience of poor rural households.

Life beyond coffee

ENTREPRENEUR PROFILE: Doña Julia Rivera learns to diversify in Honduras

Doña Julia lives in a region of Honduras called Marcala, known for its high-quality coffee production. Undernourishment is a widespread problem among coffee farmers in this region. Normally, farmers only earn an income during the four months of coffee harvesting—leaving farmers eight months each year, known as the “thin months,” to survive on their coffee earnings.

Creating a food safety net

Farmers build climate resilience in Ethiopia

iDE provides farmers access to improved seeds and training in proven agricultural practices to increase crop yields that enable small-scale households to have food year-round.

A new era of progress

Promoting modern agricultural practices in Mozambique

Farm business advisors are change agents who dispense information about best practices in technology, fertilizers, pest management, and postharvest storage through training sessions and demonstrations, as well as sell direct services, such as crop spraying.

Increasing self-sufficiency

Farm Business Advisors address food security in Zambia

Refugees are making new lives with the assistance of agricultural extension agents who provide training, advice, products, and services so that they can build businesses around vegetable production.

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Planting on the straight and narrow

Changing agricultural methods to increase yields sustainably in Vietnam

Compared to mainstream fertilizers and air-borne applications, Fertilizer Deep Placement produces 40% less chemical runoff and 30% fewer greenhouse gas emissions. It also increases yields, leading to a win-win for the farmer and for the environment.

Personal water harvest coaches

Watershed community management in Honduras

To overcome disasters such as crop disease, iDE works with farmers to diversify their crops and connect to markets, helping them have enough food and money to survive year-round.

Farming is a business

Cambodia Agribusiness Development Facility (CADF) focuses on increasing the profit of small-scale commercial farmers

By improving access to technical assistance, market information, quality inputs, and new technologies, iDE increases value-chain efficiency and competitiveness to benefit small-scale farmers.

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Seeding the market with the right agricultural technologies

Increasing crop yields through dynamic private sector partnerships.

Axial flow pumps, power-tiller operated seeders, and mechanical reapers have the potential to transform farming practices by increasing precision and conserving resources. iDE works with local entrepreneurs who can ensure farmers have access to these machines.

Fueling the coffee craze

Value chains in Latin America

Honduras is the leading producer and exporter of coffee in Central America. Doña Julia Rivera is a coffee farmer in Marcala—a region of Honduras known for its high-quality, organic, and sustainably produced coffee beans. Working with iDE, Doña Julia has been able to expand her farm business with the help of drip irrigation and farmer training. Her farm is now an example in her community.

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