This year, Regeneration kicked off work on the African Forest Landscape Restoration Initiative (AFR100). With the African Union Development Agency as its secretariat, AFR100 is a country-led effort to restore 100 million hectares of deforested and degraded landscapes across Africa by 2030.

Regeneration is a partnership between Palladium and Systemiq that works across East and West Africa to speed up the restoration of nature. This is done by supporting entrepreneurs who grow tropical commodities with the expertise, finance, and market access they need to scale production.

“Regeneration is excited to be implementing the Market Readiness Technical Assistance Facility (MRTA) as part of this initiative,” notes Feker Tadese, MRTA Team Leader.

Entrepreneurs have the power to improve food security, increase climate change resilience and mitigation, and combat rural poverty explains Tadese. “However, in many African countries, entrepreneurs are unable to access the right support and skills to scale their businesses, as well as different types of finance.”

Through the MRTA, Regeneration will be providing entrepreneurs in the restoration sector – otherwise known as ‘restoration champions’ – with no-cost business advisory support, as well as facilitating access to global markets and investors.

Currently, the AFR100 MRTA program is focused on three African landscapes that are critical for carbon, biodiversity, and human wellbeing: the Greater Rift Valley in Kenya, the Ghana Cocoa Belt, and the Lake Kivu and Rusizi River Basin in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda, and Burundi. Palladium has been working in the region for a number of years, including through the UK-funded Partnerships for Forests, and has developed a good understanding of the working context and built a team of local experts.

Lessons from Kenyan Entrepreneurs

Recently, the MRTA team had the chance to carry out site visits to meet eight Restoration Champions across Kenya to better understand their needs and operations and how the MRTA could support them.

The team spent time discussing the entrepreneurs’ motivations to start their businesses, the day-to-day operations, their growth ambitions, the challenges they are facing, and even got to try samples of their products. They met entrepreneurs working across a range of commodities, from macadamia nuts and avocado oil to drought resistant tree nurseries and fresh fruits.

Some initial learnings from the visits include:

1. Entrepreneurs are open and eager to receive support. Throughout the site visits, all entrepreneurs expressed their need for immediate technical assistance and support; a good early indicator that technical assistance would be transformative. One entrepreneur said “businesses from humble beginnings have a fear of growth and don’t know who to go to, to reach massive scale. We need guidance on how it should be done.”

2. Entrepreneurs are overwhelmed with the administrative and bureaucratic steps needed to take part in support programs. Some mentioned they have historically been required to carry out arduous exercises of completing and submitting long documents to participate in support programs which do not guarantee their entry. This diverts a significant amount of productive time that would otherwise be dedicated to the businesses – especially if they are short on human resources, which is often the case.

3. Diversifying to create new revenue streams is crucial for businesses to survive in the future. One entrepreneur that the team visited was processing macadamia nuts for export. They highlighted the risk that price shocks pose to them – for example, in 2023, shocks led to a ~70% drop in market prices, severely impacting their business and sales. Diversifying their business to include value addition products provided a basis for stable revenues, allowing them to protect their commercial interests and impact delivery.

4. Most entrepreneurs are still keen to acquire organic certification to unlock premium markets. Focusing on organic production was of high interest to the majority of entrepreneurs, however the cost of securing the relevant certifications was noted as a significant barrier, highlighting their need for financial support.

5. On the ground, entrepreneurs are driving the social and environmental change agenda. From visiting processing facilities, we could see the dozens of jobs created for local people through these businesses, especially for women and young people. Some entrepreneurs who had tree nurseries were offering seedlings for free or at a small cost to ensure farmer propagation of trees and help provide them and their families with improved food security. One business had even setup a football club, currently at the top of their league, to mitigate against alcoholism and illicit drugs amongst young people in the community.

Looking Forward: Fostering Relationships with Entrepreneurs

Amongst the array of valuable lessons learned, the most important was this: building in-person relationships is key to the success of the program.
All the entrepreneurs the team met with valued the visit and very openly shared the stories about their journey and the challenges that they were facing. “This not only helped the team to gain a deeper understanding about their businesses and the potential support that the MRTA team can provide, but it also helped to build the trust between the team and the entrepreneurs,” notes Tadese.

The MRTA team have also conducted field visits to the Ghana Cocoa Belt and the Rusizi River Basin, and insights from these trips will feature in subsequent publications. By working closely with locally led restoration initiatives, the MRTA team not only supports restoration targets, but also invests in local businesses, creating jobs and bringing economic prosperity to communities, contributing to AFR100’s overall mission of bringing 100 million hectares of land in Africa into restoration by 2030.

For more information, contact info@thepalladiumgroup.com.