Doubling the Incomes of East African Fruit Farmers with The Coca-Cola Company and TechnoServe
Small-scale farmers make money by selling what they grow, but getting crops to markets can be a daunting task. By using better seeds and techniques, organizing themselves into business collectives, and building relationships with creditors, processors, and wholesalers, smallholder farmers can transform a subsistence activity into a powerful tool for improving their lives and helping their communities.
To that end, in January 2010, we entered into an exciting new partnership with The Coca-Cola Company—the largest single purchaser of fruit juice in the world—and nonprofit TechnoServe 
to double the incomes from mango and passion fruit sales of up to 54,000 fruit farmers in Kenya and Uganda by 2014.
With a $7.5 million grant from the foundation to TechnoServe, $3 million provided by Coca-Cola, and $1 million provided by Sabco, Coca-Cola’s bottling partner in East Africa, the project aims to create new market opportunities for local farmers, whose fruit will be used for Coca-Cola’s locally produced and sold fruit juices. TechnoServe will give farmers the training they need to improve the quality of their fruit, increase crop yields, organize into business collectives, and access credit.
“This partnership is a great example of sustainability,” says Nathan Kalumbu, Coca-Cola’s East & Central Africa business unit president. “By partnering with tens of thousands of local farmers, we can help increase their incomes while meeting our needs for locally sourced fruit.”
We have already committed more than $1.5 billion to programs strengthening agricultural infrastructure and resources in the developing world—from seeds and soil to farm management and market access—so progress against hunger and poverty is sustainable over the long term. “History has shown that almost no country has managed a rapid rise from poverty without increasing its agricultural productivity,” explains Sylvia Mathews Burwell, president of the foundation’s Global Development Program. “In sub-Saharan Africa, agriculture represents two-thirds of all employment and about a third of GDP. If prosperity is to grow on the continent, agricultural productivity must grow with it.”
We believe this partnership will boost the incomes of smallholder mango and passion fruit farmers in Kenya and Uganda by 100 percent or more, helping them build better lives for themselves and their families.