How to Build Trust with One Acre Fund

Featuring Matthew Forti and Doreen Ndishabandi of One Acre Fund

English Sall: [00:00:02] I'm English Sall. Welcome to System Catalyst, the podcast that cracks the code for making the world a better place. You know that saying change moves at the speed of trust? Well, that's true, especially when it comes to changing entire systems. Building trust with government. The communities affected by these systems and other organizations is key. It's a slow process, but once it sticks, it makes a huge difference. Today I'm excited to chat with Matthew Forti, and Doreen Ndishabandi through One Acre Fund. They've helped millions of smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa by providing seeds, training and other resources. And to do so they have had to engage with several stakeholders. So today, they're going to share how they built those crucial relationships. Do either of you have a favorite place that you've ever traveled? Like if you could pick one place to like go back to or take maybe somebody that you love to? Where would that be? [00:01:21][79.6]

Doreen Ndishabandi: [00:01:22] That's a very difficult questions. And I think if you can allow me this one time, I am going to cheat and say to. I would say the first one for me is Lamu, which is this small island off the coast of Kenya. It has the most beautiful sunsets I've ever seen in my life, and that's where I was to get engaged. So I'm slightly biased. But in the second place is one that continues to hold a lot of meaning for me in my life. It's a small, kitschy Mayan village in southern Belize, on the coast of Belize and Guatemala. And that's where I served as a Peace Corps volunteer. But, it's really beautiful out in the middle of the forest, surrounded by these two beautiful rivers. But I ended up developing very close relationships in my time there that I've continued to date. So it's one of those places that I think about going back to all the time. [00:02:18][55.7]

English Sall: [00:02:19] I love that I'm gonna have to put both of those places on my list. [00:02:21][2.3]

Doreen Ndishabandi: [00:02:22] Highly recommended. [00:02:22][0.3]

English Sall: [00:02:23] Awesome. Matt, what about you? [00:02:24][1.0]

Matthew Forti: [00:02:25] Yeah. So I think for I think for me, I'm going to go with the Kakamega rainforest in Kenya. It is on the border of Uganda. It's really the last remaining portion of what was once almost a trans African rainforest. And it's a beautiful place to hike, to enjoy birdwatching. There is a lovely lodge that I think blocks the internet, so you really have to just be in nature yet. Peace with your surroundings. And One Acre Fund does actually a lot of work in that area, so I like seeing how the farmers that abut that rainforest are living, you know, more in concert with nature, as a result of the work we do. So it's, it's really a lovely place to be. [00:03:09][43.5]

English Sall: [00:03:09] That's amazing. Oh, that sounds beautiful. Well, Matt, what a perfect. What a perfect segue. You set me up perfectly. I would love to get you to tell me a little bit at a high level. Like, what problem are you trying to solve with One Acre? And why do you care so much? And why should we care so much about the problem you're trying to solve? [00:03:32][22.2]

Matthew Forti: [00:03:32] Yeah. So really, what inspired One Acre Fund is two farmers that when we traveled to western Kenya in August 2005, that we met and August in Kenya is what's known as The Hunger Season. It's when the staple crop from the previous harvest is running low, and families are really just subsisting, trying to get to their next harvest. And it's a time of great malnourishment of children. Sadly, child deaths are highest in that part of the year. And most farmers that we met and, you know, it's as context when you're in a rural part of most of Africa, the vast majority of households you'll meet are farming. That's their dominant income source. It's obviously also their food source, and the vast majority are yielding extremely low harvests per acre. And one family we met actually was a bit of an outlier, and she was able to grow five times more food per land area than her neighbor, just from having had enough cash at the beginning of the of the planting season to access quality inputs. And then she had been trained by an extension agent in her community to space her seeds properly. And that was really it. It was those few things that made an extraordinary difference and that really inspired us to start One Acre Fund. You know, there are 50 million small scale farmers in Africa who are chronically hungry. And if you think about that, right, this tragic irony of people whose profession is to grow food don't even have enough to feed their children all year round. And, you know, very simple trainings, techniques and capital can dramatically improve the quality of life and food security of of entire communities in Africa. [00:05:15][102.7]

Doreen Ndishabandi: [00:05:16] I'll give you an example of what this looks like. I remember when I first joined One Acre Fund in 20, 2016, we had developed this really successful solution that we went deploying across our markets. But we were doing this independently as a single actor. But then we realized early on that in order to achieve scale and the level of impact that we wanted to, it required us to operate differently. One, by recognizing that there were multiple actors operating in that system, and two, it wasn't healthy for the system if one was playing or trying to play all of those roles. So what we started doing over time is thinking about how we can incentivize and influence other actors in the agriculture system to operate in ways that, drive better outcomes for farmers. And I'll give one practical example of our seed systems work in Rwanda. Four years ago, Rwanda was struggling with low domestic seed production, and the country was heavily reliant on the importation of seed, which often came in quite late and was so expensive for the government that was subsidizing it. So then the government decided that they were going to stop importation of seed. But they were also projecting at the same time that it would take at least five years to develop a domestic seed sector. Last year, we partnered with a university in Rwanda called the Buffett Foundation in the Ministry of Agriculture to launch Rwanda's first Seeds Center of Excellence, which is now providing five B2B services to solve some of the most common challenges that seed companies face. So through the seed center, these companies get recommendations on what seed varieties are best to to plant. They get access to farmer data. They get access to hands on training and certification for their staff. They get access to infrastructure that they can't afford, and we also connect them to upwards financing and training. So I think for me, the seed systems work in Rwanda is a great example of the evolution of systems change work. And also I think it really speaks to the long term direction of this strategy of precipitation. [00:07:30][134.0]

English Sall: [00:07:34] One Acre Fund currently serves 4 million smallholder farmers across nine sub-Saharan countries, collaborating with governments and other stakeholders. But first, they had to establish themselves and build credibility. One of the things that I find, I think extremely unique and really impactful about One Acre is the way in which you collaborate both with the communities, the smallholder farmers, the, your customer, your user. But also how do you manage that? How do you think about how governments get involved? How do you sort of manage that ecosystem of of stakeholders? And I wonder, Matt, can you speak to that collaborative glue a little bit? [00:08:14][40.0]

Matthew Forti: [00:08:14] Yeah, I think One Acre Fund started, and especially because we work in rural areas, I think we were very much an independent actor trying to really, in some sense avoid the system and create our own disruption in our work. And, you know, I think actually those years were quite critical for what eventually became our Systems Change program because, you know, you really built the knowhow, the credibility, the evidence that, you know, is, is important if you're going to actually try to work collaboratively with players that have been in the communities far longer than we have. But, you know, I think once you sort of step into saying, okay, how can we kind of parlay the competencies we've built in doing farmer focused innovation, you know, in an area like training, for instance, and, you know, really try to multiply that out to an entire region or an entire country. That's when you begin to try to map out, okay, who are all the actors that are working at all the different levels with farmers, and what are the incentives? What are the driving behaviors of each of those actors? And, you know, where can One Acre Fund, you know, humbly play a difference and where can't we? [00:09:25][70.9]

English Sall: [00:09:26] It sounds like a very egoless approach, because that's what's better for the system as a whole is to be a contributing partner. I do wonder, can either of you give me give me an example, give me a memory of a time where it was really hard to work with a partner, which was really hard maybe to collaborate with a government or a stakeholder, and how that how that felt and what you did. [00:09:50][23.7]

Doreen Ndishabandi: [00:09:51] I'd probably say having done that mean relations for quite a bit. There are lots of challenges that come with that type of relationship. You have release from power dynamic, and it was a huge learning lesson for us too, that with this work specifically, it's important to figure out how to align all the actors within your system across a shared vision and figuring out what that Northstar is for everyone. So it's not about what when is driving or what the government's driving, but are what is the collective vision that all the actors should be driving towards? I think sometimes when people think about governments, you just picture this scary beast on the other side of the table. And as they say, because of the power dynamics. Sometimes we get to tactical in the way that we engage with them. And one of the landings for us a few years ago was that at the end of the day, the people sitting on the other side of those interactions, and there are many elements of the way that we build relationship and trust in any other relationship in our lives with partners, friends and the people around us that still apply in those engagements. So there's a period where we'd come in with, you know, this very nice, clean, polished agendas, and we knew exactly what outcomes we wanted to drive from this engagement. And you would step out. Of course, they are required to interact with you when you show up at the office. So you'd come in, they would tell you what they're telling you and you'd leave. And, I remember walking out once and someone on our team said, well, that went really well. Someone else in our team say, no, that went who? Really? The decisions were made before we got into the room and they were not engaged. They were just entertaining us. And so we went back and started thinking about what happened in that room and how could we approach them differently. So the next time we went to meet with them, one we decided not to meet at the office. We asked if they could meet us for breakfast, so we had a cup of tea and the first 45 minutes they spoke about the kids, they spoke about their family. We learned that one of them really cared about his faith and was a huge part of his identity. So we ended up debating the Bible and things that would typically not show up in our make up and attendance, but it changed that relationship in a way that I would say had a huge effect on, on the work that we were doing with that government institution at the time. And since then, we've taken the learnings from that and applied them to many of the interactions that we have with government. But most of the when I was still doing government relations, I knew the names of the kids and the wives and husbands and the favorite things that people are doing outside of work. And as you say, English. I think it's also just humanizing those relationships because that's how you build trust. [00:12:50][179.1]

English Sall: [00:12:51] I just see that as like the most perfect kind of like tidbit and takeaway is just, you know, it's it's relational and it's about humanizing everyone in the equation because we all at least step into this work because we want to help be part of the solution, be part of problem solving. And sometimes that can get lost in the shuffle when we're trying to move through life in a transactional way. So that was really beautifully said. Thank you Doreen. [00:13:17][25.7]

Matthew Forti: [00:13:18] Doreen, I think one thing you're reminding me of is, this phrase I heard recently and I love, which is that, you know, coalitions and systems work moves at the speed of trust. Yeah. And I think, you know, as, as an organization, one acre fund, when we do our direct service program, we're very impatient. We see, a problem. We want to innovate and immediately introduce, you know, a new solution to, the work that we're doing. And I and I think we've learned the hard way with our systems change work that, you know, you do have to invest in the relationship side of things. You have to understand where the power centers sit, what the incentives of each sector are, and you know it. One can't just go in presenting its vision and expecting that that vision is going to prevail. If we haven't actually done the the long and hard work of building trust, building relationships and understanding the dynamics of every actor, you know, sometimes very controversial, challenging dynamics of every actor in a system. [00:14:16][58.4]

English Sall: [00:14:17] I couldn't agree more, Matt. One of our episodes that has dropped recently explores this idea of trust based philanthropy. How does that that trust base kind of work with the entity and its and its stakeholders, right, its funders, the governments, just just the various partners that can be involved in system change work. I'd love to just unpack this with you guys a little bit. Like how do you also work with funders? [00:14:43][25.4]

Matthew Forti: [00:14:44] Well, you know, not systems change is not for the faint of heart, right? I think both for the organizations. Doing it as well as the funders supporting it. And I think it does take a unique kind of funder. I think one that, first of all, is willing to to provide much longer average length grants than those who who fund direct service work. I think, you know, secondly, those who are willing to fund a portfolio of systems change opportunities, especially because, as I said, windows of opportunity open and close. And at any given time, we need a funder to trust us that it's the right time to be pressing go or double down on this system while pausing or retracting a bit on this other system. And so if it's a funder, you're only funding in one system. That can feel very disheartening. But I think if you're funding a portfolio of work, you will inevitably see progress in some aspect of the portfolio. And then I think the trust also goes into measurement, right, that there are certain indicators of progress that, you know, absolutely can be captured. But the degree to which we're able to to have linear, you know, growth or improvement on those indicators is, is is often not going to happen. So we need funders that are also, I think, open to a more holistic kind of measurement, one that includes community voice, one that includes, you know, an understanding of the the sort of perceptions and behavior changes of actors. These are the kinds of things where, you know, measurement tools have been validated in, you know, around for years and are as generally accepted as the ones for direct service measurement where they're, you know, randomized controlled trials plus experimental. Besides, there's sort of a there's a language and a methodology that many social entrepreneurs can use. I think in the work of systems change, it is much different. It's more complex. So those are the kinds of things I really think it takes a funder that's willing to kind of be in the the muck, if you will, with you, and not one that is expecting the kind of progress that you get with direct service work. [00:16:56][131.4]

English Sall: [00:16:58] Doreen and Matt are right. Trust has to flow in all directions when it comes to this type of work. To get the government to collaborate with you, you need to build a relationship with them and find some common ground. Funders need to trust system catalyst because measuring success here isn't as clear as in the traditional nonprofit work. And of course, I really wanted to hear how they build trust with the most crucial players in the system, the farmers. [00:17:26][27.5]

Doreen Ndishabandi: [00:17:28] One of the advantages I would say, that we need to fund has is that we are based in the communities where this work actually happens. We don't have any headquarters in a capacity. They are all in the rural areas where farmers. So we spend a lot of time in the fields actually understanding what the lived experiences of farmers are, how they're evolving over time, and how that should influence the types of services that we deliver to them. So it's not about us sitting in our offices and trying to think about the solutions that are being deployed in the field. It's spending time in the field to understand how farmers are experiencing these challenges every day, and then how we can empower them with solutions that are often already available. The majority of our staff are from the communities where we operate. And oftentimes when you talk to people in our team, they'll tell you that they either have a parent or grandparent, sibling or someone in their family who is a small boy or a farmer. And personally, my grandparents were also smallholder farmers. My grandfather was a cotton and coffee farmer and is still a farmer as we speak. So for a lot of the people that we work with, this is not simply a day job. There's a lot of meaning and purpose behind that. So I'd say one is just getting the right people on the team who are aligned with the values of the organization. And then I would say we need to find is unique in the way that it invests in professional development. So providing every staff member with an opportunity to challenge their own growth, and then you're given the resources to really grow within your role. But we find that to also be a powerful accountability mechanism to make sure that, the people that we hire and retain within the organization for your line with our values. That's great. [00:19:25][117.2]

English Sall: [00:19:26] That's awesome. Matt, do you have anything to add to that? Just sort of around the culture and especially because, like you, you know, you and Andrew, you really started this organization. Did you have that culture in mind like from the get go? [00:19:37][11.5]

Matthew Forti: [00:19:38] I think we did. It obviously takes many years to build it and fits and starts to feel like you're getting it right. But I do think from the beginning, again, as we looked at sort of the landscape of work happening. With small scale farmers. A lot of it felt like it was coming from sort of professional agronomists. Ph.D., you know, folks in capital cities that were trying to impose what was coming out of of research or evaluation on the global scale into small scale farming communities. And I just think, you know, the lack of the local knowledge accompanying that is what makes those efforts often fail. And so I think from the beginning, saying we're going to set up our headquarters in rural areas, we're going to be proximate to the customers that we're trying to serve. As Doreen said, I think hiring from the communities, you know, it is very common for a pathway to be, you know, you're a farmer in the program for a few years, then you become a volunteer group leader, which means you help to organize other farmers and ensure that farmers are accessing the trainings and succeeding in the program. You might then become a field officer, which is a full time staff position at One Acre Fund, in charge of anywhere from 300 to 500 farms, and then a supervisor and up and up. There's a huge career ladder available to talent in rural areas that is always there but never often nurtured. So I think all of those decisions and then, you know, most importantly, I think treating farmers as customers and not as passive beneficiaries. You know, when you design a program that is a loan rather than a handout, what you find is that if your services aren't adding value, you simply won't see it reflected in the repayment rates and the retention rates of the farmers in the program. And when we see low repayment rates, it's often our fault. We know that we're doing something wrong. We didn't provide the services in quite the right way that season, and and we're able to quickly identify and fix any challenges that are happening. So I think the phrase, you know, customer is king or queen kind of comes to mind here, right? That that you you switch the power dynamic when those you're trying to serve are really using the power of the wallet to vote for, you know, whether the services are adding value. So all of those are part of the founding values. And I think, yeah, have made a really big difference in our ability to generate impact and trust. [00:22:07][148.3]

English Sall: [00:22:08] Matt, I really love that. And I think that that's a really key point. And another organization that I work with called PSI has a really similar philosophy around, you know, the fact that people do have preferences. And by us allowing them to to put dignity in those preferences and saying, this is how I'm going to speak, I'm going to use my resources to indicate what my preferences are. It's a really powerful thing. And I think it it takes us from a mentality of a beneficiary to a customer to a human who has choice. And how do we become a choice of what it is they choose to spend their time and resources on? It's an extremely potent mental shift, I think, in the space of philanthropy, in the space of global development. I wonder, have you is there is there a difficulty in communicating that? Have you found pushback on on that kind of just that theory of change at all? And if so, how have you handled that? [00:23:12][64.3]

Matthew Forti: [00:23:13] Yeah, I think probably the biggest pushback is simply, you know, One Acre Fund is working with an extreme poor and in many cases an ultra poor population. How is it conceivable that you can charge for your services? How can you take money away from communities, from, you know, your customers who are having to still make very challenging sacrifices day to day where they have to invest their limited resources. And, you know, and also, how can you keep farmers out of the program if they don't repay their loans? And those are challenging questions. Those are things we have wrestled with. I think what we've what we've ultimately found, though, is, as you said, the revealed preference through choice is just such a powerful way to interact and give power to communities that are underserved and that, you know, it's it's really part of our responsibility as the organization to really limit, mitigate, ideally, eliminate the possible reasons why a farm family can't thrive in a program. And maybe just to give one example of that. You know, the biggest reason why a farmer would default on their loan is because of whether crop disease or some other, you know, contextual element that affects their ability to yield the average. And, you know, what we had done in the early years was unfortunately, farmers were bearing all of that risk. And we quickly began to realize we need to create even though it doesn't exist. We need to create a crop insurance system for smallholder farmers in Africa. So that biggest risk is eliminated, and we've done that now in other areas like creating health insurance, funeral insurance products. So I think it's on the one hand, it's it's, it's our responsibility. On the other hand, I think the, the, you know, again, creating the conditions for for farmers to feel empowered as customers is, is just ultimately the best way to run the program. [00:25:13][119.7]

English Sall: [00:25:14] Okay. So my final kind of two questions kind of all kind of wrapped up two sides of the same coin here that I would love to ask both of you and Matt, maybe I'll start with you, but what is one piece of advice that you would have for funders looking to fund system catalysts? And what is one piece of advice you would have for system catalysts looking to move a system, change a system, get into this idea of system change work? [00:25:42][27.9]

Matthew Forti: [00:25:43] Yeah, I think on the on the funder side, you know, what comes to mind for me is the famous, African proverb that if you want to go fast, go alone. But if you want to go far, go together. And I think that's just so true in this kind of work. I think we've said a few times that if you want quick results, you know, the level of, of a farmer or a community, then you just want to invest in direct service programs with, you know, high amounts of evidence behind them of impacting cost effectiveness. You know, we can do that. We know that for a lot of funders that want to do that. I would just say for those who are brave enough to jump into, you know, how can we actually think about cost solutions? How do we think about on a 2030 year time frame, what the, you know, kind of communities and contexts are going to look like? You know, in the global South? I think, you know, that's where it's time to jump into to funding systems change. I would just say to funders to have patience, as Doreen said, go to gemba, you know, go to the field, go to go to where the work is being done alongside those that you're supporting. Really take the time to hear from communities and stakeholders and just, you know, help develop a deeper understanding alongside, you know, those that that you're supporting to to do this work and be patient with the length that you know the outcomes may take. When I think about One Acre Fund's impact, I'm proudest of this work. And when I think about decades long timescales, I think this is the work that will define what one acre fund was able to achieve, and less so our direct work that Byron staff with farmers. [00:27:22][99.2]

English Sall: [00:27:23] Yeah, absolutely. Doreen. [00:27:25][2.0]

Doreen Ndishabandi: [00:27:26] I would say my answer has different parts. One is a bit more generally is that whether we like it or not, we operate in a system every single day. The question is whether we choose to engage with it and, play a part in it. But once we make the decision to operate in a system, you realize that there's a huge multiplier effect on your scale, your impact, and your sustainability. And this applies to anyone who's interested in delivering both big scale and big impact. And then I think below that maybe repeating some of the things I said. One is really start out by mapping out the political economy of the system in which you operate, understand who are the actors, what are the intrinsic motivations? What the sources of funding, what are the centers of power? I think sometimes it's naive to think that because we all operate in the same sector or within the same system, that every actor is motivated by the same incentives. And then I think after doing that, it's aligning everyone behind that shared vision and then defining what that not state is, but also defining the different roles that various actors play in. As a systems catalyst, your role is on capitalizing on that strength that each actor brings to the system, whether it be a particular set of expertise that's missing or resources that can push the work forward. But I would say my last, my last bit of advice is systems change. Work is very complex. It's very different from deploying a single set of interventions that has a single serve change. You know, dealing in this case with interconnected theories of change, which is attributed across various different actors, which makes both the impact difficult and time consuming to measure. So for anyone who's trying to do this work, I would recommend spending a bit of time at the beginning thinking about how to approach that. [00:29:29][123.0]

English Sall: [00:29:30] Matt and Doreen, it's been a pleasure. That's it for today's show. Please don't forget to subscribe to System Catalysts so you don't miss out on a new episode. Also, do us a huge favor by rating our podcast and leaving us a review. Thank you all so much for joining us, and we'll catch you all in the next episode. Before we go, we'd like to thank our producers at Hueman Group Media. We'd also like to thank our incredible network of partners who are supporting our mission the Skoll Foundation, the Aspen Institute's Global Leadership Network, Echoing Green, DRK Foundation. Maverick Collective, Virgin Unite, Charlize Theron Africa Outreach Project, Boldly Go Philanthropy, Synergos, Forward Global, Nexus and New Profit. If you are interested in becoming a system catalyst and would like to learn more about our partners, please visit System catalyst.com. [00:29:30][0.0]

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