Our work
Agriculture
Our focus is on the world’s largest group of entrepreneurs: smallholder farmers.
With a growing world population, the demand for food will increase enormously in the near future. In Sub-Saharan Africa it will increase by 55% over the next ten years.
The farming population is aging rapidly. The average age of farmers in Africa is 60, while the majority of the population is under 24 years of age.
Growth that originates from small agricultural producers is 2 to 4 times more effective at reducing poverty than growth from other sectors. The role of women in this is especially important; women have the highest possible impact on improving family incomes.
Over 50 million farmers in Africa have low access to inputs, knowledge, finance and markets. Because of this smallholder farmers have low production and live in poverty.
Game-based learning
Through playful learning, people learn more easily and more effective. We use digital simulation to help theory turn into real-life skills. And it is fun!
Games add experience to the theory, which makes them very effective training tools. Even for complex matters like finance. People remember up to 90% when they experience things themselves in a simulation like Farming Forward.
Game environments enable players to learn at individual pace and level. Instead of one standard learning module for all participants, game environments enable players to follow their own learning curve.
Gaming stimulates fluid intelligence; the ability to solve problems and learn new skills as analytical thinking, problem solving, complex decision-making, collaboration and creativity.
Digital games generate relevant data that provide important insights in progress, behaviour and mindset of players. Digital training games scale up more easily than traditional learning methods, both interms of quantity and quality.
ABC for farmers
Kucheza facilitates farmers to build the awareness, knowledge and skills to understand the full breadth of smallholder farming as an income generating activity. They recognise opportunities, and make decisions that will let them professionalize their farming business.
Our training programme ABC for farmers enables farmers to treat their farm as a business. ABC stands for Agronomics, Business management and Cooperation.
Agronomics covers the relationship between agronomy and economics, and focuses on optimizing the relationship between inputs and outputs in all aspects of the farming process.
Business management covers the business side of farming, from keeping financial records, making budgets, managing cash flow and calculating on income and investments.
Cooperative entrepreneurship helps to harness the power of cooperation. By working together, smallholder farmers can access resources like inputs and improve their negotiation power.
Farming Forward
Kucheza’s digital training game and supporting tools help players to develop awareness, knowledge, skills and call to action.
