Scaling Pearls of Wisdom
One component of the Scaling Pathways series is Scaling Snapshots, which are glimpses into one organization’s scaling journey, including the strategies pursued, implications of those strategies and “Pearls of Scaling…
About the Organization
More than 50 million families in Sub-Saharan Africa earn a living from small farms, which produce up to 80 percent of the continent’s food. But harvests still lag far behind the rest of the world, as African smallholders struggle with extreme weather, depleted soils, and a lack of access to resources to boost their productivity.
One Acre Fund is the world’s leading organization serving African smallholder farmers. They supply products, services and training to enable farmers to increase their yields, incomes, and resilience to external shocks. When farmers become more productive, they help feed healthy communities and create thriving economies. They also reduce pressure on the environment by making existing farmland more productive and by planting trees.
One Acre Fund serves more than 5 million farmers annually – more than half of whom are women – through direct-service programs and country-scale partnerships with public and private sector actors that build stronger agricultural systems for smallholders. By 2030, One Acre Fund has an ambitious goal to reach 10 million farm families, annually generating $1 billion in farmer income and asset gain, while planting a cumulative 1 billion trees this decade.
Subsistence farmers in Africa struggle to get by when planting season means scarcity of seeds and fertilizer, and harvest season brings glutted local markets and low prices.
Ambition for Change
One Acre Fund envisions a future in which every farm family has the knowledge and means to achieve big harvests, support healthy families, and cultivate rich soil.
Path to Scale
Since 2006, One Acre Fund has grown to become Africa’s largest nonprofit dedicated to improving the prosperity and resilience of smallholder farmers. In its next growth phase, One Acre Fund will scale its impact by:
- Replicating its proven direct-service program in new regions within 10 countries of operation
- Initiating new public and private sector partnerships, complemented by policy and coalition-building efforts, to improve agricultural systems for all smallholder farmers
- Deepening impact through new cash crops, agroforestry, and optimized agronomy offerings that both increase farmers prosperity and boost financial, nutritional, and climate resilience.
Skoll Awardee
After serving as a strategic consultant to Fortune 500 companies, Andrew Youn returned to school to study an MBA at Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management. During his MBA, he had the opportunity to travel to Africa where he met with local farmers and learned about their quality of life. The trip exposed him to the barriers to successful smallholder farming in Africa – including the lack of inputs, training on how to best utilize these inputs, and access to markets – and how the low yields resulting from these challenges led to hunger and poverty. Andrew founded One Acre Fund (1AF) to address these challenges and provide a comprehensive bundle of services to improve the productivity and income potential of these farmers. In 2016, Andrew delivered a TED talk about 1AF entitled "Three reasons why we can win the fight against poverty," which has since been viewed more than one million times. Under Andrew’s leadership, 1AF won the prestigious Conrad N. Hilton Humanitarian Prize in 2023. After 17 years as 1AF’s CEO, Andrew now serves as the organization’s President.
Impact & Accomplishments
- In 2024, One Acre Fund served more than 5 million farm families across our full-service programs and through partnerships, encompassing 27 million total family members. These families earned more than $400 million in new profits and assets by working with One Acre Fund.
- As of 2024, One Acre Fund had equipped farmers in 9 countries to plant a total of 250 million trees to date, putting the organization on track to plant a cumulative 1 billion trees by 2030.
- As of 2024, One Acre Fund has reached country-wide scale in Rwanda. Between its full-service program and 12 active partnerships, One Acre Fund reaches an estimated 95%+ of Rwanda’s entire smallholder population, with the average farm family accessing multiple One Acre Fund interventions.
- In 2023, One Acre Fund was honored to receive the Conrad N. Hilton Humanitarian Prize, the world’s largest annual humanitarian award, recognizing our work to support smallholders in building farm-level climate resilience.
Affiliated
Matthew Forti
Managing Director, One Acre Fund
Doreen Ndishabandi
Global Chief of Staff, One Acre Fund, One Acre FundIn the News
Related Content
Andrew Youn on Putting Farmers First to Beat Africa's Hunger Crisis
In May 2015, a group of ambitious philanthropic collaborators, including the Skoll Foundation, pledged to make a measurable dent in Africa’s hunger crisis through a catalytic $100 million investment to…