News & Insights

We are looking for a finance manager, responsible for ensuring that Rikolto‘s financial system and its implementation is top of sector. Applications welcome until 27 June.

Rikolto is part of a multidisciplinary consortium recently awarded $3.8 million to launch the project “People-centered Food Systems: Fostering Human Rights-based Approaches”. A multidisciplinary project consortium led by Dr. Jessica Fanzo, Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of Global Food & Agricultural Policy and Ethics at Johns Hopkins University, has received a $3.8 million grant to apply a human rights-based approach to food systems.

On this world food safety day, get to know more about this collective effort in Nicaragua, which has united actors who do not generally work together in the country to conserve a lake. A big endeavour by itself, but one that might also improve the safety of the production of the country's main vegetables for consumption.

In 2009, secondary schools in Lira partnered up with Rikolto and YOUCA to empower Ugandan youth to become active in agriculture. Now more than a decade later, we revisited the schools in Lira to learn from our previous experience and integrate learnings in our future programmes. Tag along with Rikolto colleague Hannes and read his story about his journey to the schools in Lira.

60 young women and men joined us to hack the challenge of how to feed the greater Ouaga area, debating and defining opportunities and challenges for young food entrepreneurs, from 20 to 21 May. Read more about their journey.

Rikolto and FoodUnfolded, a platform powered by EIT Food are organising the dialogue: The true cost of food - Access to Healthy & Sustainable Diets for Everyone, as part of the United Nations Food Systems Summit 2021, on Wednesday 16 June.

In October 2020, we embarked on a project with Badami Foundation, Parahyangan University, and Ketapang Kita to develop innovative solutions to improve access to affordable food and address the growing issue of food waste in Bandung.

The Mitiiri cooperative is an organisation led by a team of young, dynamic agricultural producers committed to professionalising their organisation, so that it can position itself as a reliable business partner with a good reputation in the Centre-East region of Burkina Faso.

In its climate plan, the city of Antwerp states the ambition to make the local food system more sustainable. To achieve this, the city has started to develop a food strategy, encompassing the whole food chain. The process will identify strategic priorities to build a more inclusive, innovative and circular urban food system.

Twenty thousand producers in the region will benefit from the Multistakeholder Coffee Platform in Cajamarca, an initiative that currently brings together public and private actors in the value chain in the region. Since 2020, Rikolto together with the Coffee Technical Commission in Cajamarca and the Northern Technical Network promote this space that contributes to the National Coffee Action Plan and strengthens the national leadership of the region. Our colleague Lith Montés tells us more about this trip.

In Pedro Moncayo, a town located 60 kilometres north of Quito, the capital of Ecuador, Rikolto identified a group of farmers willing to modernise their business to increase their incomes, not only respecting the limits of nature but also honouring them.

Leuven recently launched the EcoFoodMap: an interactive tool that maps the food system in and around Leuven. The tool provides the necessary information about all initiatives, actors, experts and indicators in the Leuven food system.

For businesses all around the world, the push to be carbon-neutral continues to be a huge priority. The coffee sector is no exception. Climate change threatens the amount of land suitable for coffee farming around the world, making production more difficult and more expensive.

This farm, whose name reflects what its owner Juan Pablo Ruiz initially saw in it, has grown from 9.6 hectares of pastureland to a national reference farm with three organic certification seals for coffee and cocoa, agroforestry systems, orchards, pruning management, windbreaks, water management and a barrier against chemicals.

UNERIZ's mission is to defend and safeguard the interests of women rice parboilers in Burkina Faso. The organisation supports its members in accessing paddy and credit. The umbrella organization of women parboilers' cooperatives strengthens the technical and management capacities of its members; it facilitates their access to storage equipment and infrastructure and supports them in marketing parboiled rice.

On 12 March 2021, at the Agricultural Extension Centre, Department of Agriculture and Rural Development of Tuyen Quang province, a Memorandum of Understanding Signing Ceremony was held between the Provincial Agricultural Extension Centre, Agricultural Service Centre of districts and Minh Tam Poultry Breeding and Production Cooperative to coordinate the implementation of the model of linking cucumber production and consumption for 2021 in the province.

In 1964, one of the most important hydroelectric projects in Central America was launched in Nicaragua, which would completely change the landscape of a city when a successful 54 km² reservoir was built for energy purposes. This is the first part of the story of Lake Apanás, the country's first artificial lake, now in danger of extinction, and an approach to its conservation.

In a mutually beneficial deal between onion farmers from the Pangani riverbank and East Africa Fruits, farmers are growing quality, healthy onions for the markets in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

Bad infrastructure and roads, a continuous threat of armed conflict, and high and arbitrary taxes make it difficult to get the coffee across the border and obtain a fair price for it. Wannes Slosse, a Belgian PhD-student at the University of Ghent, is examining Rikolto-supported coffee cooperatives in the highlands of the Eastern provinces of the DR of Congo.

What happens when you bring together a group of students from different courses under the guidance of experienced coaches to tackle a social problem? You get great ideas. And one of those ideas is about to hit the shelves: Délicé, a granola made from the surplus from processing cranberries.

Jessica is a cocoa producer, mother and community leader. She has been promoting generational change in the farmers' organisation Fortaleza del Valle for a few years now, as well as the improvement of cocoa plantations. How does Jessica see the future of the organisation with more women leaders like her? Read her vision in this story.

Mambasa, DR Congo has an enormously rich biodiversity. But poaching and massive deforestation for agriculture threaten the region. The young farmers of Cacao Okapi opt for a radically different approach. You can taste that approach in a Belgian-Congolese gourmet chocolate from Veliche: Okapi 65.

What does it take to lead a coffee cooperative? Managers, directors and leaders of coffee farmer organisations have been working to answer this for the last four years in a “School for Leaders”.

We are excited to announce that we are advancing our partnership with SCOPEinsight by becoming the newest member of their Local Expert Network (LEN). With them, we have already performed more than 185 evaluations in Africa, Latin America, and Asia.

We were supposed to interview two young farmer members of the cooperative in April 2020 with a camera crew. Unfortunately, not one but two crises postponed our visit with Rikolto: first the Covid-19 crisis, and in November, two severe hurricanes that caused irreparable damage in Central America. We arrived on Yamileth and Santiago's land nine months later. This is their story of resilience.

Thanks to a loan from the Belgian association Entrepreneurs for Entrepreneurs (OVO), entrepreneur Leonard Shayo can kickstart the production of precooked beans in Tanzania.

Honduras made history by approving the first gender policy for the coffee sector in a producer country. How did this policy born, how was it developed, and what benefits does it promote for women in coffee? In this article we show how.

With covid-19 interrupting many interventions, we had to find new ways to promote sustainable rice cultivation with rice farmers and other stakeholders in Uganda. Explore more in this story!

At Rikolto, the question ‘What will we eat tomorrow?’ is at the core of our work. One specific aspect of this question is ‘Are we still going to have farmers, not only in terms of the workforce but also people who have sufficient knowledge of both agriculture and technology and who are skilled in transferring this knowledge to future generations?'

A remarkable radio campaign was launched on Saturday 16 January in the Tanzanian city of Arusha, to make the inhabitants of the city and its surroundings aware of the importance of safe and healthy food for everyone.