News & Insights

Currently, we are over halfway through our five-year 2017-2021 programme funded by DGD, the Directorate General for Development of the Belgian Ministry for Foreign Affairs. In 2019, Rikolto engaged in the mid-term review of our programme across 13 countries. Access the mid-term review reports here.

Peru, Honduras, Nicaragua, Ecuador and the Dominican Republic are some of the countries that showcased cocoa best practices in response to the pandemic during the Online Cocoa & Chocolate Summit 2020. The event was organized by Conexión Chocolate and MOCCA (USDA, TechnoServe, LWR and Rikolto).

In October 2019, Ecuador was paralysed by public protests. In March 2020, as the first covid-19 cases started appearing, the country's food system was tested again. Food insecurity peaked. In a context of food insecurity, how do we re-imagine our food systems?

The super fair-trade chocolate 'Way to Go!' developed by Lidl Belgium, Rikolto, Fairtrade Belgium and Kuapa Kokoo, will be sold in 2,000 stores in Germany, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands as of this year.

"In every crisis lies opportunity" perfectly sums up the case of the organic and fair-trade cocoa industry in Honduras: Chocolats Halba has seen a 30% increase in demand for its product since the quarantine in Switzerland started.

Jorge Flores, coordinator of youth projects in Nicaragua, shares his personal experience on how you can empower other young people while working on your own empowerment.

Over the next three years, Colruyt Group and Rikolto in Ivory Coast will collaborate with Fairtrade Belgium, the chocolate processor Puratos and UGent to make Colruyt Group's private label chocolate more sustainable.

Rikolto, together with FAO, RUAF, ICLEI and UN Environment, organised this webinar focused on how three different cities, New York, Kampala, and Quito, responded to prevent the food insecurity generated by Covid-19 and invited them to share the lessons learnt.

Kampala has been booming as an innovation and start-up business hub. Now, the COVID-19 crisis and its confinement measures are forcing businesses to adapt their models. Let's have a closer look at one example of an innovative company in the food industry: Bringo Fresh.

Kort’om Leuven is a new distribution platform - co-founded by Rikolto - that brings local farmers, supermarkets, restaurants and consumers together in a cooperative with the aim of setting up a fair, local food system in and around Leuven.

How are cities maintaining access to safe and nutritious food for vulnerable populations in times of Covid-19? Join our webinar on the 15th of May, co-organised by FAO, UNEP, ICLEI, RUAF and Rikolto.

Updated! The COVID-19 pandemic, besides a global health crisis, is also a challenge for food and nutrition security. One thing is clear: People should not have to choose between their health or their food. Beans are both very much loved and highly nutritious - how can they be a viable solution for food security?

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought our daily lives and economies to a halt. Our colleagues and Rikolto’s partners will also need to realign their daily work. Yet this should also be a time of reflection. And for Rikoltians, this means reflecting upon what this crisis means for our current food systems and what conclusions we can draw that will help shape them in the future. 

Food Heroes all over the world take care of the food on our plate, also Rikolto's colleagues all over the world continue to work on the food of tomorrow. Let's meet their stories here.

More than a third of children in Indonesia suffer from malnutrition, often due to an unbalanced diet. School meals are a simple and effective tool to provide all children with healthy and high-quality food.

Together with 4 partners, Rikolto in Belgium is launching a new soup, with an amazing story: Robin Food. The soup is made from surplus vegetables for which the farmers have difficulties finding a market due to the corona crisis.

This year, RIkolto together with his partners in AMEA, organized workshops in Peru and Honduras where to share the improvements on ISO/IWA 29 and the settlement of local webs in these countries which allow to avance further toward an international standard. Get to know how we boosted, together with AMEA, a market ecosystem at the service of professional agricultural organizations.

Big news! We have started a new project to support smallholder farmers in Northern Uganda. On 14 January 2020, the project kicked off as part of a wider partnership between the Government of Uganda and the European Union.

Benin's government desires to curb Asian rice imports, ensuring food self-sufficiency in Benin. How is it possible to increase rice production without negatively affecting the environment in a context of climate change?

What can we learn from farmers in Kenya? An exchange visit showed that innovative tools are creating incentives for smallholder farmers to adopt good agricultural techniques and increase productivity.

Despite their many internal differences, the main actors involved with the food system in and around the city of Quito are joining forces for the first time. They agree that the city’s food supply can be improved.

How to put 'inclusive business' principles in practice? In this article, we give some examples about how farmers get better access to services in specific business cases brokered by Rikolto.

On 23 January 2020, Rikolto awarded the ‘I’m more than my receipt’-Award to Colruyt, a major retailer in Belgium. In this article we showcase the results and process behind this award.

In this webinar we will demonstrate how vegetable farmers in Nicaragua met the professional needs of the market, and how data can be used to make inclusive business happen. Sign up!

Rice farming exposure was a starting point for women empowerment in Babati, Tanzania. "I am one of them, first as a daughter and now as a mother,” says Mary Temu. Know her story.

Rikolto’s cooperative partners in Jambi, Barokah and TAKTIK, received an achievement award from the Indonesian Ministry of Agriculture for their commitment in developing downstream business activities. This award marks an important milestone for the cooperatives on their journey to build sustainable value chains.

Discover how the inclusive business model between the Consorcio Agrocomercial and La Colonia brings benefit to about 800 farmers and supply the Honduran supermarkets with safe and quality vegetables

In early December, Rikolto had the pleasure to welcome representatives of 7 cities from Africa, Latin America and Asia in Leuven, Belgium. We exchanged about our challenges, solutions and ideas to make local food systems more sustainable. The inclusion of small-scale producers and low-income consumers is key to make this happen.

Between March and August 2019, three journalists from the digital platform Eos Tracé visited partner cities of Rikolto's Food Smart Cities programme. This book tells their stories from 9 cities in Vietnam, Belgium, Tanzania, Indonesia, Ecuador, Honduras and Nicaragua.

Why have asparagus flown in from Peru if you can also grow them a stone’s throw away, in Haspengouw? In the Belgian town of Leuven, a short chain platform is being established, aimed at ensuring the town’s inhabitants eat more local produce.