For over 50 years, TechnoServe has helped hardworking women and men in the developing world gain the skills, connections, and confidence to create self-sustaining businesses and build a path out of poverty. In part two of this series, we ask a few of these farmers and entrepreneurs to share how the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted their lives and how they are coping with its effects.
The COVID-19 pandemic is affecting farmers, entrepreneurs, and workers across the globe, but its economic impact on women is particularly severe. How can the private sector, governments, and civil society ensure that women can continue to do business amid the pandemic?
In Benin, the cashew industry has the potential to help hundreds of thousands of small-scale farmers lift themselves out of poverty. However, poor agricultural practices often limit their productivity and incomes. TechnoServe is using remote sensing and machine learning to map cashew production and target agricultural training to farmers who need it most.
Cashew has the potential to transform Benin’s economy – and the lives of the smallholder farmers who grow it. However, many farmers lack the technical knowledge they need to get the best harvest from their cashew orchards. TechnoServe is developing a digital chatbot to help farmer trainers quickly access the information they need, allowing them to effectively support more farmers.
For women and girls in the developing world, COVID-19 is exacerbating existing inequities and creating new challenges. In Benin, women cashew farmers like Elisabeth Atchade must juggle many responsibilities, including earning money for the household while also taking on the majority of child care responsibilities. Learn how a TechnoServe program is helping women address these challenges and emerge from the crisis even stronger.
Many popular foods and beverages are grown by smallholder farmers around the world. These farmers are experiencing increasing challenges as they struggle to grow their crops in the face of extreme weather, droughts, floods, and other threats. Learn about a few of the crops most affected by climate change and what TechnoServe is doing to help these farmers build climate resilience.
In sub-Saharan Africa, TechnoServe is working to create new industries and incomes from products typically discarded as waste during cashew and coffee processing.
In Benin, cashew farmers are facing many challenges as they try to adapt to rapidly changing conditions due to COVID-19. We talked to Nicholas Mancus, TechnoServe’s chief of party for the BeninCajù program, to learn about the challenges these farmers are facing, how the pandemic is impacting women and men differently, and what TechnoServe is doing to help.
The BeninCajù program is working to make Benin’s cashew sector more productive, competitive, sustainable, and inclusive. Today, we’re sharing a behind-the-scenes look at the daily activities of a TechnoServe gender and access to finance specialist who works on this program.
The BeninCajù program, a partnership between TechnoServe and the U.S. Department of Agriculture, is working with 48,000 smallholder cashew farmers to increase yields, boost revenue, and encourage domestic processing.
