Expertise

EUCORD has expertise in the following fields:

Creation of public-private partnerships: EUCORD’s main advantage is its demonstrated capability to forge partnerships with the private sector as well as with local NGOs and host country governments. Combining the strong points of these three types of partners helps to create synergy and accelerate impact. EUCORD serves as a broker and problem solver among the various businesses and organizations that have a stake in the partnership.

Integration of smallholder farmers in agricultural value chains: EUCORD’s strategy is based on ensuring a market-led, demand-driven development approach, where agribusiness firms function as the means to translate the demand in final product markets into farm-gate demand for quality raw material supplies. The objective of this approach is to encourage farmers to increasingly invest in their production to meet the demand of targeted markets and become more productive, efficient and competitive in the management of their farming enterprises thereby stimulating local economic growth.

Diffusion of best agricultural practices and technologies: To increase on-farm productivity, EUCORD facilitates the dissemination and adoption of improved production and product handling technologies to meet farm-gate market requirements of product quantity, quality, timeliness and price. EUCORD works in close partnership with international and national agricultural research institutes to assist with the adaptation and transfer of technologies through on-farm trials, demonstrations, and capacity building of farmers, extension agents and agro-dealers.

Strengthening the organizational capacity of NGOs and cooperatives: Organizing smallholder farmers and strengthening their capacity to produce for targeted raw material markets is key to ensure that they can access markets operated by large agribusiness firms. Only when smallholder farmers are organized in producer groups can transaction costs be reduced sufficiently to make the inclusion of smallholders in the supply chain feasible. EUCORD helps to strengthen management capacity of local partner NGOs and farmer cooperatives to produce for commercial markets, and to improve service provision including access to credit, inputs, equipment and training.

Provision of income generation opportunities targeting women and youth: EUCORD has experience with the implementation of community-based income generation training programs targeted to vulnerable populations, including women and youths. Beneficiaries are provided with options on how to select viable income generating activities and receive training on how to select, operate and manage the activity. The training involves simple bookkeeping and record keeping methods. Beneficiaries are encouraged to form savings and loan groups, open a group bank account or to jointly operate revolving fund activities.

Agricultural sub-sector assessments and market surveys: EUCORD has been involved in several agricultural studies and evaluations to design public-private partnership programs, value chain projects, commodity sub-sector assessment, market surveys and lessons-learned evaluations. A number of these assessments have led to multi-year projects and/or private sector investments.