Global Partnerships: Catalyzing Shared Value

Partnerships that leverage the combined resources and expertise of the public, private and nonprofit sectors are uniquely positioned to deliver impactful solutions to development challenges.

This week, the U.S. Department of State is celebrating the critical role public-private partnerships play in promoting diplomacy and development around the world with Global Partnerships Week (GPW).

At yesterday’s kickoff event, the Partnerships Practitioners Forum, TechnoServe’s Senior Vice President of Development spoke on a panel about how governments, the private sector and civil society can work together to create shared value and alleviate poverty. “One of the key factors in success of public-private partnerships is trusted relationships,” he said.

TechnoServe has decades of experience forging trust-based relationships with cross-sector partners to achieve sustainable impact at scale. For smallholder farmers, we serve as an honest broker to help navigate the business world – building capacity and increasing access to markets, resources and finance. For multinational and local companies, we are the trusted partner who understands their needs and assists them to realign with a new world of expanded stakeholders and greater social engagement. For government and civil society partners, we are an effective translator and bridge to market-based solutions that address development challenges.

For instance, our work with Partners in Food Solutions (PFS) is promoting food security, nutrition and local economic growth through an innovative collaboration. PFS is a nonprofit organization that links technical and business expertise of volunteer employees from General Mills, Cargill, Royal DSM and Bühler to small and growing African food processors. TechnoServe works as PFS’s on-the-ground implementing partner, with funding from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). TechnoServe identifies local processors to work with, collaborates with them on a needs assessment and develops a scope of work for PFS corporate volunteers.

Another innovative partnership, the Connected Farmer Alliance (CFA), is leveraging mobile technology to address major challenges in the agriculture industry. CFA is a partnership between USAID, Vodafone and TechnoServe that aims to increase the productivity, incomes and resilience of 500,000 smallholder farmers, including 150,000 women, in Kenya, Mozambique and Tanzania. TechnoServe and Vodafone are working with farming communities and supply chains in these countries to develop and scale mobile applications that enable smallholders to receive payments securely, access other financial services, and link to local and multinational agribusinesses.

Through Project Nurture, a partnership with The Coca-Cola Company and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, TechnoServe has helped 54,000 small-scale mango and passion fruit farmers in Kenya and Uganda increase their fruit incomes. The partnership worked to jumpstart the mango and passion fruit industries in the two countries, bringing smallholder farmers into inclusive and sustainable value chains. As a result of the project, Coca-Cola’s Minute Maid Mango became the first product to use locally sourced fruit juice.

Similarly, TechnoServe and Coca-Cola are collaborating on the Haiti Hope Project, a five-year public-private partnership among businesses, multilateral development institutions, the U.S. Government and nonprofits, designed to create sustainable economic opportunities for Haitian mango farmers and their families. The project has helped 27,000 farmers, half of whom are women, improve the quality of their mangoes and organize into producer business groups so they can sell directly to exporters at higher prices.

Learn more about how TechnoServe is partnering for lasting impact.