TechnoServe’s Year in Review: 10 Moments That Shaped 2025
In 2025, TechnoServe navigated challenges, launched exciting new initiatives, published cutting-edge research, and helped entrepreneurial people around the world create economic opportunity. Here are 10 milestone moments that marked the year at TechnoServe.
- Scaling the Social Impact of Business
In March, TechnoServe experts from the Commercial Agriculture for Smallholders and Agribusiness Technical Assistance Facility (CASA TAF) program published From Pilot to Scale: Shared Value Creation for Inclusive Agribusiness. The learning paper captured five years of CASA TAF’s lessons on designing and implementing inclusive business plans that create value for agri-food businesses in Africa and Asia while delivering better livelihoods for smallholder farmers.
- Making the Investment Case for Regenerative Coffee
How much would farmers, economies, and the planet benefit from a transition to sustainable coffee production? TechnoServe helped to answer that question in April with the publication of the Regenerative Coffee Investment Case.
The groundbreaking research, published with support from Nestlé, JDE Peet’s, and the Rudy & Alice Ramsey Foundation, studied the opportunity in nine leading origins and found that regenerative production could increase smallholder farmer incomes by an average of 62%, boost coffee exports by 30%, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 3.5 million tons of CO₂e annually.
- Launching a New Partnership for Sustainable Production in Nigeria
In May, TechnoServe, AGRA, and Nestlé held the formal launch ceremony for the Strengthening Farmers’ and SMEs’ Resilience through Climate Smart Grain Production and Accessing the Structured Markets (StreFaS) project in northern Nigeria. The three-year program aims to support 25,000 farmers growing staple crops like maize, millet, and soybeans. StreFaS delivers regenerative agriculture training to help these smallholders improve their yields and on-farm resilience, while engaging aggregators and other businesses to help farmers access more profitable markets.
- Responding to Foreign Aid Cuts
Like many organizations working in international development, TechnoServe was affected by the cuts to foreign aid in 2025. Several impactful projects closed prematurely because of these cuts.
In July, TechnoServe CEO Will Warshauer responded to the cuts by writing, “We can’t give up. The future of international aid in development may look different, but its broad goals of more prosperity, more opportunity, and better lives for everyone are more important than ever.” Thanks to its strong partners and generous donors, TechnoServe has been able to adapt, innovate, and continue helping clients around the world.
- Linking Base-of-the-Pyramid Markets with Nutritious Food in Kenya
In July, the Millers for Nutrition coalition and the National Duka-owners Umbrella Organization (NDO), both powered by TechnoServe, held a workshop to promote market linkages that would enable low-income Kenyan communities to better access nutritious food. The workshop brought together representatives from 21 Kenyan food companies that produce healthy, fortified foods.
The workshop helped to familiarize these representatives with Kenya’s $19.8 billion base-of-the-pyramid market–composed of consumers who individually have low incomes but collectively represent significant demand and opportunity–and how to effectively market to them through small micro-retail shops called dukas. Such linkages will help producers of nutritious food to boost their sales, duka owners to increase their product offerings, and Kenyan families to combat micronutrient deficiencies.
- Boosting Peru’s Circular Economy
Is it possible to create economic opportunity by tackling solid waste pollution and promoting recycling? That’s the idea behind the new Empleos Verdes Arequipa project, supported by the Anglo American Foundation, which launched in September.
The project will support the growth of the recycling sector in and around southern Peru’s largest city, providing business and technical advisory support to circular businesses, helping recycler associations to formalize their operations, and providing training in employability and occupational safety for youth and women. Empleos Verdes Arequipa builds on an earlier pilot project that showed the sector can help to create quality, green jobs.
- Harnessing Technology to Support Entrepreneurs
In a bid to reach more small business owners and increase the scale of its entrepreneurship work, TechnoServe launched NOVA EdTech in 2025. The digital learning platform will provide online access to TechnoServe’s proven entrepreneurship curriculum from anywhere in the world.
“We believe every entrepreneur has the potential to grow significantly when equipped with the right tools and support…NOVA EdTech was created to unlock that potential at scale, leveraging technology to deliver practical, accessible training that meets entrepreneurs where they are and empowers them to thrive,” said Bruno Vicenzi, manager of the initiative.
- Making the Case at Climate Week
Climate Week NYC, held in September each year, is one of the largest climate gatherings in the world, bringing together leaders from the private sector, governments, multilateral institutions, and civil society. In 2025, TechnoServe had its largest-ever delegation, sharing the organization’s on-the-ground experience and expertise and advocating for climate solutions that put people first.
- Celebrating One Million Coffee Farmers Trained
In a moment 16 years in the making, TechnoServe celebrated training its millionth coffee farmer in October. Starting in just three countries in 2009, TechnoServe’s coffee agronomy programs have now trained farmers across 16 countries. For projects completed between 2022 and 2025, every dollar invested in TechnoServe coffee programs yielded $4.71 in impact for farmers.
To mark the occasion, TechnoServe highlighted the story of eight farmers who had graduated from training programs. In Honduras, Reyna García was able to improve the volume, quality, and value of her coffee harvest. “With the additional profit from selling the coffee, I bought beds for all my children,” she said.
- Championing Regenerative Solutions for the Amazon at COP30
As the year drew to a close, the world gathered in Belém, Brazil, for COP30. Held in the Amazon for the first time, this year’s edition of the United Nations Climate Conference had a strong focus on protecting this critical rainforest.
TechnoServe’s representative at COP30, Thiago Chang, reported, “Overall, the panels I was in felt like real mutirão energy, a very Brazilian idea rooted in collective effort, where people come together around a shared task and move it forward through collaboration and solidarity. At COP30, mutirão was also the guiding principle, and you could feel that in the room.”
The past year was a consequential one for TechnoServe and its clients around the world. The need to create a sustainable world where all people in low-income communities have the opportunity to prosper is more urgent than ever.
