Unleashing the potential of traders in rural development

Traders

1. Introduction

2. Approach

3. Research

4. Services

5. Key projects

1. Introduction 

KIT’s Sustainable Economic Development area works to improve the livelihoods of vulnerable producers in through action research, policy development and training.

A targeted effort is needed to include poorer households in integrated supply chains: technical upgrading, organizational and managerial development and access to working capital are all required to enhance smallholder participation. The Chain Development programme was set up to address these issues.

2.  Approach

Our work evolves around two key challenges:

I. Chain empowerment of smallholder producers
We develop strategies and tools for value creation by smallholder producers through vertical integration (chain activities) and horizontal integration (chain management).

II. Involving the private sector in poverty alleviation
We develop strategies and tools for setting up business ventures with private entrepreneurs that are both commercially viable and beneficial to poverty alleviation.

We work on rural poverty alleviation by developing value chains that benefit smallholder producers in the South. We integrate three dimensions of sustainability: social, ecological and economic sustainability or – “people, planet, profit”. We do this in two ways:  Research and Services. 

3. Research

 As an expertise centre, we generate and disseminate knowledge and methods for pro-poor chain development. Building on best practice, we design innovative public-private partnerships, models and tools to involve business in poverty alleviation. We generate knowledge through action research and share the lessons learned with practitioners and policy-makers.

4. Services

As facilitators of chain development, we match producers to business partners and investors, and facilitate learning and innovation by establishing multi-stakeholder platforms. We assist smallholder producers to build their capacity to participate in supply chains, and we assist European companies to strengthen their corporate social responsibility. Our role is to ensure that business partners find each other, that expertise is available, and that business ventures deliver benefits to the poor.

5. Key projects 

- Chain empowerment
We organized a ”writeshop” with 30 practitioners involved in pro-poor value chain development in Africa in order to learn from experience and categorize chain development strategies. The results have been published in the book “Chain Empowerment: supporting African farmers to develop markets”.

- Trading up
Based on the premise that the lack of respect for the role of traders is an obstacle to increased market access for smallholders in Africa, traders, farmers and practitioners from a dozen African countries were invited for a week-long "writeshop" to document their experiences of overcoming distrust and learning to cooperate for their mutual benefit. The results have been published in the book “Trading up: building cooperation between farmers and traders in Africa”.