Mopti Coordinated Area Development Program (Mali III)

Building Local Business Capacity, Strengthening Farming Co-ops and Associations

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Summary

Mali remains one of the world’s least developed countries. The rural Mopti region, which is situated in the center of the country, is especially poor, with 94 percent of the population in poverty and 78.6 percent in extreme poverty. Chronic underdevelopment and cyclical natural disasters such as droughts and floods in recent years have caused a decrease in productive assets and left the people in the Mopti region is vulnerable. On average the region 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 resulting in lower yields and making farmers more vulnerable to weather-related risks.

The USDA-funded Mopti Area Coordinated Development Program builds upon the achievements of the former phase of the program (Mali FFPr) to address agricultural challenges in the Mopti region. ACDI/VOCA is a sub-implmenter under the prime Aga Khan Foundation (AKF USA).

  • Increase agricultural production of smallholder farmers
  • Increase household incomes
  • Enhance civil society
  • Promote adoption of improved agronomic techniques and improved inputs for key staple crops, such as rice, millet, sorghum, and vegetables
  • Facilitate marketing of agricultural products by working with producer groups to improve marketing structures, production quality, and market power
  • Form, mobilize, and train community-based village and women’s organizations to better manage their resources, increase agricultural production and incomes, and become agents for change and development within their communities
  • Reach an estimated 46,670 individuals over the life of the project
  • Carried out two value chain analyses and facilitated 10 exchanges between producer groups
  • Helped establish 16 new formal agreements between producer associations/cooperatives and actors in the targeted value chains
  • Trained 2,198 members of producer associations/cooperatives on product specifications and marketing standards, resulting in increased understanding of the cost/benefit margins for each link of the value chain and how to analyze input quality and supply requirements
  • Provided Farming as a Business training to 3,645 producers (1,701 women and 1,944 men) to improve business management capacity

Funder: USDA
Contact: Brett Aronson, baronson@acdivoca.org

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