Better harvests.
Stronger families.
A resilient future.
One Acre Fund is a social enterprise and agricultural service provider that supports smallholder farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa to build resilient communities. The project aims to increase farm productivity, household income and to improve food security for 34.000 households.
Approach
One Acre Fund works as a not-for-profit agricultural service provider. The client base in this project are smallholder coffee farmers in relevant coffee growing regions in Uganda. The implemented approach integrates trainings for improved farm management, rural retail, saving schemes, and income diversification with the introduction of additional cash crops.
Project activities include:
- Training of farmers in climate-smart agricultural practices, cash crops and tree planting
- Access to high-quality inputs, seeds, tree seedlings
- Facilitation and incentivisation of improved market linkages
- Saving schemes for the acquisition of inputs
The project aims for the following impact:
- $70/year increase in gross profits from coffee for 2-year participants
- $30/year increase in gross profits from coffee for 1-year participants
- $20/year increase in gross profits from chia production for adopters
- Improving the Food Insecurity Experience Scale Index for project participants
EVALUATION & LEARNING
One Acre Fund and HereWeGrow aim to generate valuable insights through the project. The project is externally evaluated by the research firm Laterite via a quasi-experimental design (Difference in Difference) with matching at parish level.
The evaluation intends to address the following questions:
- Causal effects: What are the short- and medium-term effects on recommended agricultural practices, coffee and chia production, coffee prices, and income for participants?
- Mechanisms of change: How does the project achieve these changes, and which components are most crucial for success?
- Equity of benefits: Will all household members benefit equally from the project’s effects?
- Negative consequences: Does the project have any negative impacts on participants or target communities?
Projected Return – Model Explanation
The forecast SROI of 8.2 (range: 4.2 – 11.6) draws on OAF’s own impact reports and models as well as project-specific baseline data collected by Laterite.
The assumptions that most strongly influence the SROI are coffee productivity increase, tree survival rates for macadamia and agroforestry trees, and coffee price development — all subject to considerable uncertainty at this stage, and some based on conservative estimates from OAF’s own modelling.
Midline results are expected in October 2026 and endline results in October 2028. Midline results will provide the first independent check on the forecast.
All model figures represent present value over 10 years, discounted at 10%, deflated to 2021 EUR.
Read more about our SROI methodology here.
RESOURCES
Interested to learn more? Explore latest evaluation reports.