News & Insights

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.

In Junín, the Pangoa farmer organisation grows "native fine aroma" cocoa, a favourite for fine chocolates. But in the area, the more productive "introduced clones" of cocoa are growing in popularity. So they decided to fight fire with fire and create their own "clones" of native cocoa. What is the clone strategy in Pangoa? How is native cocoa winning the battle in Peru? Read it in this article.

Two years after its creation, the Quito Agrifood Pact (PAQ) has become an international reference point. How did the contributions of actors such as Rikolto, ConQuito, and RUAF Global Partnership serve to give continuity to the work in the midst of the pandemic?

Access to finance is the last piece of the puzzle for vegetable farmers in Arusha and Manyara, Tanzania, to increase their production; and for farmer cooperative MUVIKIHO to meet the market demand.

Processing food surpluses into healthy products that are affordable for vulnerable groups: that is the aim of Robin Food. But which products need to be developed? These are the 5 most important insights the project partners learned from the market research.

The Nicaraguan cooperative Coosempoda is ready to invest and grow. Last May, they managed to sign an agreement with the Kampani social investment fund.

In the Intag Valley, in the north of Ecuador, growing organic coffee is an act of resistance to mining. Entrepreneurs such as Alba are uniting around this product. Alba is a coffee grower that brings additional value to the chain with her crafts. What does this undertaking mean for her and for the development promoted by the Agricultural Artisan Association of Coffee Growers by the Intag River? We tell you about it here.

The seed of the Sur-Siendo Cooperative was planted by several people, among them a 28-year-old young man, Diego Viturco. Learn about its history and how it has been contributing to hundreds of families having a healthy and economically accessible food alternative in southern Quito.

Covid-19 has challenged our food systems, disrupted them, and magnified issues that existed all along. Yet, after the initial shock of the crisis, food actors are adapting their way of working. And with it, food systems are bouncing back. Find out more about Rikolto's Covid support to our Food Heroes.

Logistical issues and widespread café closures – as a result of Covid-19 – have taken their toll on Latin America's coffee sector. How can partners and stakeholders work together to overcome obstacles? This question was at the heart of a series of Virtual Coffee Dialogues.

Promoting innovation by multiple actors along the chain is a key principle of Inclusive Business. Are innovation processes carried out collaboratively? Who gains from the results? We look at two examples of inclusive innovation in our rice programmes, one from Burkina Faso and one from Indonesia, to answer these questions.

In the south of the Ecuadorian capital, Quito, a neighbourhood initiative is giving life to a participatory process in which both consumers and producers have strengthened links that go beyond the purchase and sale of agro-ecological products.

Coffee cooperatives in D.R. Congo have been making efforts to access certified coffee markets by complying with the standards of multiple certification organisations. What is the impact of certification on the incomes and lives of the coffee farmers and their households? PhD-student Wannes Slosse shares his findings so far.

Since October 2018, Rikolto has been implementing the "Qualiriz: Selling quality rice for a better income" project in the Centre-East region of Burkina Faso, aimed at bringing sufficient quantities of quality rice to local markets. Rising demands come with their own set of challenges.

In the Cocoa Barometer 2020, a broad coalition of civil society organisations assess the sustainability performance of the cocoa sector. "In-depth system change is urgently needed."

A diversified agroforestry system saved a cocoa-producing farm from being wiped out by Hurricanes Iota and Eta in Nicaragua when trees of different species protected the cocoa plants from winds of up to 260 kilometres per hour.

"Well? Is it working?" In the end, that’s the question we want to see answered for our chain projects with Colruyt Group. This questions might sound obvious, but the answer isn't all that easy.

Knowledge, technology, credit and market information are crucial for farmers to be able to do their job properly. Read about the solutions we uncovered in our supply chain collaborations with Colruyt Group to ensure smallholder farmers in developing countries can access these services as well.

The "apple of his eye" for Wilber Escobar are his 700 cocoa plants from "a fine and aromatic cocoa strain" that he grows on the Santa Emilia farm in Ahuachapán, El Salvador.