Introduction

One Acre Fund helps smallholder African farmers boost productivity by delivering a bundle of services directly to their doorsteps, including start-up financing, high-quality farming inputs, agricultural training, and market facilitation to help maximize profits. These tools help farmers increase their yield per acre, grow the value of farm profits and assets, and promote long-term resilience to weather and economic shocks. 

Their annual demonstrated impact includes:

• Boosting incomes by an average of ~35%, translating to US$124 in new profits, by helping farmers improve their farm productivity in ten countries across sub-Saharan Africa.

• Equipping farmers to achieve US$434 million in new profits and assets through their full-service program and partnerships, marking well over US$1 billion in cumulative farmer impact generated since their founding in 2006.

• Planting 350+ million cumulative cost-effective tree seedlings, with a trajectory to reach 1 billion trees by 2030.

• Since 2024, directly serving over 1 million farmers in Rwanda annually (and a further 1.6 million through partnerships – effectively 95% of the smallholder population). Across all countries of operation, One Acre Fund directly serves 2.1 million farmers, and reaches another 3.4 million through partnerships. 

The problem: subsistence-level farming with shockingly low yields

Agriculture is the dominant profession of farmers presently living on less than US$1 a day. 80% of Africa’s poor are rural farm families, currently relying on subsistence-style farming to meet their food and income needs. Many of these farmers work incredibly hard but achieve extremely low yields and face uncertainties due to severe fluctuations in the weather and markets. With the right resources, training and access to broader markets, One Acre Fund helps farmers participating in the core program increase their farm profits and assets by an average of US$124. 

In many of Africa’s remote farming villages, basic technologies like seed and fertilizer are often unavailable. If they are available, farm families often cannot access the start-up capital necessary to purchase them. Smallholders also struggle to optimize their farming output without proper training on agricultural best practices. Finally, post-harvest challenges like inadequate storage, pest infestations, spoilage, and lack of access to formal markets can prevent farmers from translating yields into profits.

The solution: holistically addressing the barriers to smallholder productivity

Traditional agricultural assistance programs often provide support in just one area. For example, offering a small start-up loan or subsidizing fertilizer. But distributing high-quality farm inputs yields little benefit if farmers cannot afford them or do not know how to properly use them. To truly improve farmers’ livelihoods, an organization must address each of the interlocking barriers farmers face, from pre-planting access issues to finding fairly priced markets for the produce they’ve worked hard to grow.