Ashoka brings social innovation and entrepreneurship to agriculture in Sub-Saharan Africa and India

Ashoka announces a new grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to support social innovation and entrepreneurship in agricultural and sustainable rural development.  The foundation’s grant will allow Ashoka to elect more than 90 Fellows who will spread promising innovations aimed at helping small farmers living in poor, rural communities in Sub-Saharan Africa and India move out of poverty.

 “The promise of agricultural development will be realized in part through the spread of new ideas and solutions to the challenges facing farmers in developing countries,” said Dr. Rajiv Shah, director of Agricultural Development at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. “Stimulating these innovations has the potential to help thousands of smallholder farmers build better lives for themselves and their families.”

Agricultural and rural sustainable development initiatives supported by Ashoka will be oriented around key issues such as new technologies, farmer productivity, key agricultural policies, and connections between smallholder farmers and markets. Ashoka’s network already includes many Fellows working on agriculture and rural development related issues— whether developing markets for small farmers in Kenya, or using local knowledge to regenerate arid land through natural farming and permaculture in India.

Ashoka realizes that innovations alone do not create sustainable large-scale solutions in agriculture and sustainable rural development. These new solutions endure only when social entrepreneurs have a community-level understanding, build a broad citizen base of support, introduce incentives for participation, and topple traditional barriers to entry or involvement.  This partnership will allow Ashoka to launch 90 social entrepreneurs and their powerful, pattern- changing ideas that are built on this bottom up approach. Additionally, as a product of the increased number of entrepreneurs in this area and their broad base of supporters, Ashoka will be able to identify transformative universal principles that will ultimately revolutionize the field.

Valeria Merino, Ashoka’s Vice President leading this partnership, shares, “We are committed to finding a solution and building a broad coalition to end the cycle of poverty in India and Africa.  By refocusing agricultural development initiatives around the needs and perspectives of smallholder farmers, it’s possible to build on systemic change from the bottom up. Ashoka is honored to join this movement that looks towards permanently alleviating poverty for rural communities.” 

Due to these critical partnerships, the world’s largest community of social entrepreneurs is taking social innovation and entrepreneurialism to new fields.  Ashoka has recently been able to elect new Fellows in the areas of journalism and technology and now looks forward to bringing these transformative principles to the areas of youth, climate change, and disability.

For more information please contact:

Ashoka Southern Africa Office