Mali – Food for Progress

Improvements in Agricultural Marketing Improve Incomes, Food Security

ACDI/VOCA works in Mali with the Aga Khan Foundation to improve the livelihoods of some of the country’s poorest farmers in the rural Mopti region. Through training in improved agricultural production and marketing, farmers will increase incomes and food security.

The work will be conducted under a USDA-funded Food for Progress program implemented by the Aga Khan Foundation (AKF USA). In October 2009, AKF USA awarded ACDI/VOCA a three-year, $1.89 million sub-recipient agreement to lead agricultural marketing.

Agricultural Marketing

ACDI/VOCA will work with producer organizations in up to 20 villages in the Mopti region to reach an estimated 5,000 households to expand their access to markets and increase and diversify incomes.

ACDI/VOCA will train farmers using its Farming as a Business (FaaB) curriculum.

Additionally, ACDI/VOCA will strengthen the capacity of 20 producers’ groups as well as reach a larger community by transmitting 65 radio broadcasts that address production and marketing opportunities and techniques.

Background

Mali remains one of the world’s least developed countries and ranked 160 out of 177 countries in the 2010 UNDP Human Development Index.

The rural Mopti region, which is situated in the country’s center, is especially poor with a poverty index of 75 percent (UNDP). Such a high level of poverty leads to weak social indicators in the region: 90 percent of women and 70 percent of men are illiterate, 41 percent of children suffer from chronic malnutrition, with half that number being severely malnourished (World Bank).

A significant number of rural agricultural producers in Mali are vulnerable due to unpredictable climatic conditions, poor market access and seasonal food insecurity. The Mopti region is especially vulnerable—on average it experiences only one good harvest out of every three rainy seasons.

The majority of the rural poor in Mopti rely on rain-fed cereal crops that yield less and make farmers more vulnerable to weather-related risks.

For more information, contact Zachary Arney at zarney@acdivoca.org.

Updated: 3/11

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