This picture shows the woman's entrepreneurship and determination to improve her livelihood and care for her family. On her back she is carrying her baby
She has both boiled peanuts in the large basin and roasted peanuts in the black plastic bag. She is using a small scoop to measure the quantity, 50 centimes for one scoop and one CFA for two. She also has little clear plastic bags to package the product for each customer with her money tray on the ground for making change. She was marketing at one of the Office de Niger stations along the route of the irrigation canal where our project is operating. She represents both the entrepreneurialism of women in the Malian society and the type of microfinance client we are helping microfinance institutions to reach with expanded products and services. In time, she might expand her business to provide food to workers, perhaps setting up a kiosk and hiring other women to help. By providing options, we seek to increase the choices she and thousands of other like her have.
Building Local Business Capacity, Strengthening Farming Co-ops and Associations
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Summary
Mali remains one of the world’s least developed countries. The rural Mopti region, which is situated in the center of the country, is especially poor, with 94 percent of the population in poverty and 78.6 percent in extreme poverty. Chronic underdevelopment and cyclical natural disasters such as droughts and floods in recent years have caused a decrease in productive assets and left the people in the Mopti region is vulnerable. On average the region experiences only one good harvest out of every three rainy seasons. The majority of the rural poor in Mopti rely on rain-fed cereal crops resulting in lower yields and making farmers more vulnerable to weather-related risks.
The USDA-funded Mopti Area Coordinated Development Program builds upon the achievements of the former phase of the program (Mali FFPr) to address agricultural challenges in the Mopti region. ACDI/VOCA is a sub-implmenter under the prime Aga Khan Foundation (AKF USA).
Project Objectives
Project Activities and Approaches
- Promote adoption of improved agronomic techniques and improved inputs for key staple crops, such as rice, millet, sorghum, and vegetables
- Facilitate marketing of agricultural products by working with producer groups to improve marketing structures, production quality, and market power
- Form, mobilize, and train community-based village and women’s organizations to better manage their resources, increase agricultural production and incomes, and become agents for change and development within their communities
Anticipated/Achieved Project Results
- Reach an estimated 46,670 individuals over the life of the project
- Carried out two value chain analyses and facilitated 10 exchanges between producer groups
- Helped establish 16 new formal agreements between producer associations/cooperatives and actors in the targeted value chains
- Trained 2,198 members of producer associations/cooperatives on product specifications and marketing standards, resulting in increased understanding of the cost/benefit margins for each link of the value chain and how to analyze input quality and supply requirements
- Provided Farming as a Business training to 3,645 producers (1,701 women and 1,944 men) to improve business management capacity
Funder: USDA
Contact: Brett Aronson, baronson@acdivoca.org
