ACF provides the critical and extensive last-mile delivery infrastructure to reach rural smallholder farming families and works with development partners to share risk in order to foster innovative, sustainable and scalable solutions
SCALE – Access to a vast last-mile delivery infrastructure serving large numbers of rural smallholders ACF members work with approximately 650,000 smallholder farmers across 6 countries, and we expect that number to grow to 2 million smallholder farmers over the next 3-5 years as membership increases.
SUSTAINABILITY – Adoption of solutions and best practices by Private Sector. While development agencies are critical partners for catalyzing the development of innovative solutions, the private sector needs to adopt these to scale and sustain them over the long-term.
LEVERAGE PRIVATE SECTOR assets – $1 of donor money leverages at least $1 of private sector investment
“ONE-STOP SHOP” for public & private initiatives to consult on policy, and, to scale innovations and social services including health initiatives, nutrition education, water safety and hygiene, and financial services
ACF ALSO PROVIDES A UNIQUE DUAL VALUE PROPOSITION FOR DEVELOPMENT AGENCIES AND PRIVATE INDUSTRY TO COLLABORATE TO:
Test innovative technologies and new business models with value chain stakeholders
The ACF serves as a laboratory for development agencies to co-develop and then test new ideas, products and services, and scale the innovations to make them more commercially viable.
Lower transaction and management costs
Transaction costs for development agencies are lowered by supporting a platform that allows access to multiple companies – at scale – that are in direct contact with farmers. Ginning companies’ last-mile delivery infrastructure can be more effectively leveraged to test and deliver critical donor-funded products and services, not only for agricultural productivity, but in health, nutrition, and financial services.
Stronger government policy advocacy and national systems change
Reaching consensus on viable solutions between value chain stakeholders and development agencies can help governments prioritize and target infrastructure investments and policy changes more effectively.