Smallholder farmers in the developing world face considerable challenges that keep many of them locked in poverty. Mobile technologies have the potential to transform the rural economy facing impoverished small farmers.
An estimated 25% of world food crops, including maize, peanuts and cassava, are affected by aflatoxin contamination. These crops constitute the staple foods for the majority of African countries.
Even in the poorest of countries, business opportunities exist. People have demand for goods and services, and they have the potential to supply them. All too often, though, markets in these countries fail.
I will never forget my first night in Kalawa village. As I sat down to a dimly lit meal of goat stew, a thousand thoughts raced through my head...
The 54-member farming cooperative began working with TechnoServe in August 2010 to improve their business skills and diversify into a new market opportunity: purple passion fruit. With TechnoServe’s assistance, Tiret Self-Help Group built a passion fruit nursery and sowed the first seeds in December 2010. As the first vines begin…
In Nicaragua, Iveth Juárez, a small business owner who processes and sells cereal to the local market, had attended seminars, workshops, courses and training sessions on accounting and finance. But at the end of each session, she always felt the same sense of confusion.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=bdJqDAlKv-E Pascasie Mukagasana has known great hardship. She was separated from her children and her husband, Athanase Nzigiyimana, for a year following the 1994 Rwanda genocide. They reunited, only to lose a son to illness. In 1998, Athanase was wrongfully imprisoned for 10 years. Alone with her children, Pascasie struggled…
Margaret Wambui Ngure used to consider dairy farming an inadequate way to earn a living. No matter how hard they tried, Margaret and her husband couldn’t turn a sustainable profit with their herd of indigenous cattle. Traditional breeds often produce as little as one gallon per cow per day,…
Using the business skills she learned through Young Women in Enterprise, 24-year-old Cecilia Katungwa (left) launched a a shop selling knitted goods. TechnoServe recently received a new grant from the Nike Foundation to continue an initiative to economically and socially empower young women in Kenya through 2012. The Young…
