Amplifying impact through partnerships across Africa
Partnership is central to KickStart’s impact strategy. We work with +350 mission-aligned organizations to employ the powerful benefits of irrigation to achieve their diverse program goals – spanning food security, livelihoods, climate-adaptation, and many more. In return, we leverage their vast networks to reach as many farmers as possible with our tools and training, enabling KickStart to cost-efficiently drive farmer demand, awareness, and access, to last mile populations.
How we partner
KickStart’s Global Partnership Team works with organizations large and small with networks of farmers, including INGOs, local NGOs, agribusinesses, farmer associations and SACCOs, bi and multilateral institutions, MFIs, governments and UN Agencies.
KickStart brings key assets and services that amplify the impacts of our partners’ work:
High-quality irrigation tools
Our award-winning high-quality tools and equipment are designed to enable smallholders to quickly make a lot more money by leveraging their existing skills and assets.
Local access
KickStart’s country teams work to set up, support, and strengthen local commercial value chains to make our solutions/products available conveniently and sustainably to the people who need them.
Expertise & training services
KickStart trains partners, retailers, and farmers on the usage and maintenance of our pumps. And we provide training on “agropreneurship” to partners’ staff and farmers–a customizable curriculum on general agronomy of irrigated crops and principles of market-led production (farming as a business).
Financial inclusion
KickStart works with local micro-finance institutions, banks, and financial service providers to link loan offerings to farmers to purchase pumps. We also work with governments to promote smart subsidies and policy actions to bring the cost of irrigation down for both farmers and partners.
Impact measurement
KickStart conducts rigorous impact monitoring and evaluations, tracking the changes in the social and economic status of our target farmers and clients across a range of indicators.
Advocacy
KickStart engages with governments, donors, and stakeholders of all levels to put in place the policies, subsidies, and investments that catalyze farmer take-up and scale irrigation – and we promote existing policies at the local level.
Proven impact areas for partnership
By working with partners in this capacity, we collaborate with organizations across sectors on a wide array of key impact issues facing Africa’s farmers – making up a broadening coalition of irrigating farmers across the continent.
Food Security
Livelihoods
Women’s Empowerment
Refugees & IDP Services
Conflict Sensitivity & Peacebuilding
Climate Adaptation & Mitigation
Environmental Conservation
Youth Employment
Partner case studies
Nyanam International
Kenya
Through our partnership with Nyanam International – an organization founded in response to widows being left behind in their communities – KickStart is working with to change the lives of over 500 widows enrolled with Nyanam through irrigation. In an initial pilot program, MoneyMaker Hip Pumps were distributed to Nyanam farmer groups, coupled with an extensive 3-day workshop on usage, maintenance, and agropreneurship to help them build successful cooperative kitchen gardens. With the Nyanam widows paving the way across Nyanza – irrigation offers an opportunity for vulnerable female entrepreneurs across the region to create a commercial business and establish financial security and independence.
Women Farmer’s Advancement Network (WOFAN)
Nigeria
A long-term partner, the Women Farmer’s Advancement Network (WOFAN) is a dynamic locally based social enterprise that organizes cooperatives of women farmers across rural Nigeria to scale their agricultural activities into profitable ventures. KickStart has worked closely with WOFAN to support their community of smallholders to increase crop quality and harvest yields through dry season production of high-value crops. WOFAN is led by 2021 Woman Agroprenuer, Dr. Salamatuj Garba, who shared: “If we are increasing production, we must be technology conscious and RCT-driven. irst was our ‘one-stop- shop’, the KickStart treadle pump initiative”.
Heifer International
Uganda, Kenya, Zambia
Heifer International works to end hunger and poverty sustainably by supporting and investing alongside local farmers and their communities. As part of an ambitious project to enable five million smallholder farming families by 2030, Heifer selected KickStart’s MoneyMaker pumps as one of their high-impact products to support this initiative. In the partnership’s inaugural year, KickStart and Heifer distributed over 2,500 irrigation pumps to farmers in their dairy and crop cooperatives who purchased pumps through low-interest loans across three countries – Uganda, Zambia, and Kenya.
A few of our top partners
Become a KickStart partner
We’re always looking to expand our network of partners and stakeholders – enabling KickStart to scale the benefits of irrigation, farmer by farmer. To learn more about becoming a KickStart partner, contact us at kickstart@kickstart.org.