In a tightly interconnected global economy, a disruption in one corner of the world can have far-reaching consequences for local food systems thousands of kilometres away. Few commodities reveal these vulnerabilities more clearly than rice.
Consider this: rice feeds more than half of the world’s population, yet only a small share is traded internationally. When a major exporter faces setbacks, the effects ripple far and wide. In 2023, India, the world’s largest rice exporter, imposed an export ban on non-basmati white rice after heavy rains devastated its harvests. The measure, intended to protect domestic consumers, caused global prices to surge. Southeast Asian producers could have mitigated the blow, but the looming threat of El Niño, which brings droughts and erratic rainfall to a crop that requires plenty of water, clouded regional outlooks and pushed prices up further.
The result? Rising prices and shrinking availability, as well as a stark reminder that reliance on a small number of global suppliers leaves millions of people vulnerable. This is especially true in the West African countries where Rikolto works (Senegal, Benin, Burkina Faso, and Mali) where nearly half of all rice consumed is imported from Asia. In Senegal and Benin, that figure surpasses 80%. To throw off the yoke of import dependency, local food systems must be strengthened, rice and beyond.
That is precisely the challenge Rikolto aims to tackle: helping farmers adopt sustainable cultivation practices while reinforcing the business architecture that enables local rice to gain ground in national and regional markets. How?
Smallholder farmers disproportionately bear the brunt of these shocks. Their position in the value chain often leaves them carrying most of the risk, while capturing the least value. Building farmer organisations capable of negotiating better terms, accessing financing, and consistently meeting market quality demands is essential to shift this balance. Between 2016 and 2024, we performed more than 450 SCOPE assessments, a tool that measures the organisational and business performance of farmer organisations and AgriSMEs. These assessments reveal the level of professionalisation and highlight areas for improvement to take advantage of market opportunities. For example, the diagnosis can provide financiers with a clearer picture of risk which, once mitigated, could facilitate the flow of capital.
“Cooperation between all actors in the chain with a common goal”
Strengthening individual organisations is only part of the solution. Lasting impact requires that every actor along the supply and value chains – farmers, processors, traders, and service providers – has both the incentive and the means to adopt more sustainable and profitable practices. “Cooperation between all actors in the chain with a common goal” is the first of six key principles that, according to the LINK methodology, form the foundation of enduring business relationships in agri-food value chains. This framework guides Rikolto in assessing whether business relationships within the chain are genuinely inclusive, sharing value, risks, and opportunities fairly. To bring inclusive businesses to life, Rikolto has found a powerful lever in the Agribusiness Cluster (ABC) approach.
The ABC model, developed by iCRA, brings members of a cluster - farmers, cooperatives, processors, traders, input suppliers and service providers- together behind a shared market vision. Instead of transactional interactions, clusters cultivate trust-based relationships stewarded by an “aggregator”, a business actor capable of structuring demand, mobilising services, and coordinating the group.
The process begins with mapping the local market system and identifying promising value chains. In a Diagnostic & Design workshop, all actors lay their constraints on the table and co-create one pragmatic action plan: What value can we capture together? Where are the bottlenecks? What does each actor need to commit in order to achieve the common goal?
From there, trained coaches help turn commitments into implementation. Monthly learning cycles address issues as they arise, while annual or seasonal reflection workshops track progress and adapt strategies. The result is not only improved coordination but also better information flows, stronger negotiation capacity, and a more attractive business proposition for investors.
First piloted in Benin and Tanzania, and later expanded to Mali and Burkina Faso, the ABC approach was officially incorporated into Rikolto's set of tools through the signing of a partnership agreement with iCRA. Read on for some reflections based on experience gained from implementing the approach in the rice programme.
Where will the product be exchanged? Who will pay for transport? Who bears the risk if something goes wrong? In Benin, producers agree to deals that place most of the delivery risks on them. The prospect of a slightly higher price can overshadow hidden risks ranging from transport accidents that sometimes destroy entire loads to factory weigh-ins resulting in a lower final payment. To ease these recurring tensions within clusters, the DEFIA programme, which supported the strengthening of six clusters in Benin between 2022 and 2023, brought in a law firm to draft standard contracts for producers, transporters and suppliers of agricultural inputs.
Yet, as Pascal, the rice programme manager in Benin, highlights, adopting formal agreements is also a cultural shift. 'Respecting written contracts is still not the norm everywhere, but people are now more open about selling conditions and have a better understanding of their place in the chain.' The development of these contracts was accompanied by negotiation training that helped actors articulate their expectations upfront and open discussions to rebalance responsibilities in the chain.
"Respecting written contracts is still not the norm everywhere, but people are now more open about selling conditions and have a better understanding of their place in the chain."
The shift is particularly visible in the SORIZ cluster, which, according to the 2022 D&D report, had neither a clear business model nor formal contracts. Since then, processed volumes have risen from 90 tonnes in 2022 to 200 tonnes in 2024, and cooperative members’ incomes have increased by around 25%. This turnaround was made possible by a relationship-building process involving processors, service providers, and farmer organisations, guided by Rikolto, which supported producers at every stage of their production — from the fields to negotiating and delivering their paddy — and by Enabel, coordinating and overseeing the process during key meetings.
Individual and collective contracts are now established through pre-season meetings, during which prices, delivery terms and the supply of seeds, which are often provided by the aggregator at half cost, are defined. These contracts also outline the product standards needed to meet the quality requirements of niche markets that can absorb up to five tonnes of rice per month. Farmers have placed their trust in SORIZ, which requires them to diversify beyond the high-yield IR841 variety and invest in higher-value, more nutritious rice, including red, black, and brown varieties.
However, the cluster still lacks a formal system to manage contractual risks, and SORIZ's limited financial capacity means it cannot always purchase the full volume committed under contract. This brings us to the heart of a challenge common to many business clusters: access to capital often determines whether an aggregator can absorb growing production and meet rising demand — in other words, whether a promising pilot can scale successfully.
No matter how dynamic a rice cluster becomes, its growth ultimately depends on capital. Farmers and cooperatives turn to microfinance institutions and banks for commercial loans, often backed by guarantees, or benefit directly from credit lines extended to them by aggregators. But the key question remains: what type of financing can truly unlock scale?
In Benin and Burkina Faso, this challenge became tangible through two emblematic cases: ESOP Vallée, a cluster uniting more than 50 cooperatives, and UNERIZ, a union of women parboilers that gathers a quarter of the country’s parboiling workforce and processes around 52% of national paddy production. Both reached a point where access to strategic investment was essential to move forward.
Rikolto’s partnership with UNERIZ began with the creation of its franchising model, and we have continued to support the union in strengthening its business role as both an aggregator and a franchisor. Today, franchised women parboilers and their unions supply high-quality parboiled rice to UNERIZ under formal agreements. In return, they benefit from a comprehensive package of services, including collective paddy purchasing, marketing support, home parboiling equipment, access to credit, technical training and entrepreneurship coaching.
This women-led model has a positive ripple effect across the supply chain: around 75% of the paddy processed by UNERIZ comes from UNPRB farmers who apply the Sustainable Rice Platform Standard, for which they receive a higher price1. In fact, SRP-compliant rice improves the quality of parboiled rice, which now sells for up to two-and-a-half times the previous price.2 Moreover, women support producers through equipment, advance payments, and partial financing of farming activities. Financial institutions have also found a reliable partner in UNERIZ, which has become a trusted borrower, consistently repaying its loans. “Supporting women entrepreneurs who are members of UNERIZ is fully in line with the bank’s objective of helping SMEs become a lever for Burkina Faso’s economy,” explains Issaka Lingani from Coris Bank Bobo.
“Supporting women entrepreneurs who are members of UNERIZ is fully in line with the bank’s objective of helping SMEs become a lever for Burkina Faso’s economy.”
Since 2010, UNERIZ's membership has grown from 2,700 to over 7,000. Meanwhile, sales capacity has increased from 5 tonnes per franchise in 2017 to 40 tonnes per franchised steamer in 2023. However, UNERIZ struggles to absorb this growth. It can purchase only around 30%3 of the rice produced, and buyers are demanding increasingly higher quality. In order to remain a reference point in the sector, create more jobs, and enhance higher rice quality, significant structural investments are needed. Traditional lenders, however, require collateral that the organisation simply cannot provide, creating a bottleneck just when the cluster is ready to scale.
Rikolto helped bridge this gap by connecting UNERIZ with impact investors such as Kampani. After assessing the business and its steady progress, Kampani agreed to finance a new Finishing and Distribution Centre, a facility that will guarantee consistent quality and enable UNERIZ to absorb 100% of production from its franchised women parboilers. By 2026, the union aims to double its capacity and enter new non-institutional markets, bringing nutritious parboiled rice directly to households across Burkina Faso.
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ESOP Vallée also secured an investment from Kampani in Benin. When Rikolto began facilitating SRP standard adoption within the cluster, the enterprise was already well structured — and it has since achieved an impressive 95% paddy contract-completion rate and tripled its sales volumes on the local market4. The SRP standard rollout, which addressed the gaps identified in the D&D assessment (including sustainable land management and post-harvest practices), helped the cluster to double its paddy production between 2021 and 20235. The organisation also strengthened its internal governance by hiring a financial officer, an accountant, and additional technicians. This reduced the heavy operational load that had long relied on the manager’s strong leadership and business acumen, creating a more resilient, professional form of governance.
With the acquisition of 120 hectares of land, ESOP Vallée made a forward-looking investment to secure stable markets for over 1,200 farmers. Yet equipping this land would have been financially out of reach without Kampani’s support. While further investment will be required to expand ESOP Vallée’s processing capacity, newly developed hectares will offer farmers who lack land or leasing power the opportunity to rent plots and grow rice. This not only creates new economic prospects for individual producers but also strengthens the cluster’s long-term resilience by diversifying its supply base.
A final reflection concerns the role of the aggregator. With aggregators acting as credible market anchors, every cluster gained access to institutional buyers and expanded its network of whole-salers and retailers, becoming a catalytic force: in Benin, farmer participation almost doubled during the DEFIA programme, rising from 1,500 to 2,450 producers in a single year, as growers were attracted by the opportunity to learn more sustainable practices, access services and se-cure a market for their paddy rice.
Still, the cluster’s resilience depends on the aggregator’s governance and market strategy. The collapse of ESOP Bonou, one of the clusters in Benin, shows how a single strategic misstep can bring the whole structure down. In pursuit of higher-value opportunities, the aggregator placed its bets on the Nigerian market. When political tensions led to the closure of the border, the business collapsed. Diversification is essential for risk management, and clusters without strong domestic roots remain dangerously exposed to dynamics beyond their control.
A second reflection concerns how value is shared. As clusters strengthen, ensuring an equitable distribution of gains becomes critical. Today, intermediaries, processors and traders, still capture a disproportionate share of the margin. Steamers of the parboiled rice, for instance, saw their profit margins rise from 25.2% in 2022 to 37% in 2024, while farmers’ average annual net income per hectare grew by only 16.9% over the same period. This highlights that the distribution of gains still has room to become more balanced.
What emerges from these experiences is clear: when local actors organise around a shared market vision - supported by strong aggregators, access to capital, and technical guidance from organisations like Enabel and Rikolto – new impulses for local food systems emerge. As climate shocks, economic volatility and geopolitical tensions continue to put pressure on food systems, the experiences in Benin and Burkina Faso demonstrate the potential of local actors leading change on their own terms and building resilience.
1. The price of paddy increased from 125 FCFA/kg in 2015 to 190 FCFA/kg in 2024.
2. Wholesale prices increased from 250–275 FCFA/kg in 2017 to 350–375 FCFA/kg in 2022, reaching 400–450 FCFA/kg in 2023. Retail prices reached 650 FCFA/kg.
3. Members production capacity estimated 11,000 tons and UNERIZ absorption capacity is 3,500 tons.
4. Volumes of rice transformed and sold on local markets: 387 tonnes in 2022; 927 tonnes in 2023; and 1,317 tonnes in 2024.
5. The rice production campaign for 2021/22 was 609 tonnes. The campaign for 2023 was 1,472.58 tonnes.
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