Village-level delivery
Inputs arrive at local depots within walking distance of every household. No farmer should travel a day to access what they need.
Manna is a nonprofit foundation working in East Africa. Our model is rooted in practical, ground-level support — we supply smallholder farming families with everything they need to grow more, earn more, and build resilience, season after season.
We know that with the right tools, knowledge, and support, farmers can grow more food, earn more income, and build resilience for their families and communities — now and for the future. The challenge is rarely a single gap. It is often a list of problems that compound each other: seed without training underperforms; training without finance stays theoretical; finance without a reliable buyer at harvest leaves a family little better off than before.
That is why we do not offer a single intervention. We deliver the complete bundle — because smallholder farmers are fully capable of building strong, independent livelihoods, and what they need is a partner who shows up with everything at once.
Each service reinforces the others. Removing any one weakens the rest. Together, they turn a subsistence plot into a household business.
The single largest predictor of a farmer's yield is the seed in the ground. We supply drought-tolerant hybrid varieties, lime, and fertiliser — selected by agronomists for local soil and rainfall conditions, delivered to a depot within walking distance, sold on credit and repaid at harvest.
Each cohort is assigned a dedicated field officer — a trained agricultural professional who works across the communities in their area. They lead hands-on sessions in Swahili across the full season, from soil preparation through to post-harvest handling. The goal is to build knowledge that carries into the next season, and the one after that.
A bag of quality seed bought in February pays for itself by October — but only a farmer with cash in February can buy it. We extend a small loan, guaranteed by a group of 12–15 farmers. Repayment is flexible across the harvest window, in cash or grain. Basic crop insurance is included in the bundle, so a bad season does not turn a loan into a burden.
A strong harvest sold at the wrong moment delivers little. We aggregate production, provide community storage, send daily SMS price feeds, and negotiate direct contracts with regional millers — so farmers sell when conditions are best, not when they are most pressured.
Everything is delivered through field officers who work within the communities they serve — not visitors who arrive once and leave.
Inputs arrive at local depots within walking distance of every household. No farmer should travel a day to access what they need.
Field officers are recruited locally — agricultural professionals who know the soil, speak the language, and are accountable to the communities they work with.
Regular sessions run from planting to harvest. We do not drop in once and leave — we stay long enough to build knowledge that carries forward.
SMS price feeds, weather forecasts, and loan records — delivered to basic handsets, in Swahili, without requiring a smartphone or internet connection.
We are a new foundation. We have not yet completed our first season. What we can offer now is a clear account of how we will measure what happens — and a commitment to publish the results, whatever they show.
Physical harvest measurements for every enrolled household, compared against a matched control group of non-enrolled neighbours. Methodology co-designed with the Faculty of Agriculture, Novi Sad.
Net household income from farming, measured pre- and post-season. We track revenue from crop sales, input costs, and loan repayment to calculate real income change — not just yield.
Repayment rates published in aggregate each quarter to all funders and to the cohort itself. If repayment falls below 80%, we investigate before expanding.
The share of year-one households that re-enrol in year two without subsidy. We believe this is the most honest signal of whether the programme is genuinely useful.
A full year-one audit conducted by the Faculty of Agriculture, Novi Sad — published in partnership with Sokoine University of Agriculture and shared publicly.
The €72 bundle is not an end in itself — it is a starting point. When a farming household enters our programme, they receive the full bundle for a season: quality seed, hands-on training, a small loan, crop insurance, and access to a fair market. That is the investment. What we are building toward is something much larger.
Our goal is a farmer who has absorbed the knowledge, built the track record, and developed the confidence to operate without us. A farmer who sources their own inputs, manages their own finances, and sells at the right moment — independently, season after season.
We track every household across seasons — not just what they grew, but what capabilities they built. When a farmer re-enrols in year two by choice, that is progress. When they begin advising their neighbours, that is momentum. When they no longer need the bundle at all — that is the outcome we are designing toward from day one.
The loan is repaid at harvest and recycled to the next family — your gift keeps working, season after season.