Help & Hope for 1 million people in East Africa
$42.8 Million Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Grant Expands Heifer's Programs
By Ray White | Heifer Public Relations Director
Photography by Geoff Oliver Bugbee
As the U.S. and world economies struggle to rebound, a matching grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation enables Heifer supporters to get more for their donation dollars. Through this grant, Heifer International will help 1 million small farmers in Kenya, Uganda and Rwanda — three of the world’s poorest countries that are devastated by malnutrition, genocide and HIV/AIDS — realize their dreams of self-reliance.
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| Hamdun Mutsinzi and his wife Salsms Esperance Mukagatsinzi, both HIV positive, pose with their week-old calf at the Muhazi Women's Dairy and Horticulture Development Project in Nsinda Village, Kibungo District, Rwanda. They will soon pass on the calf to another needy family. |
Bill Gates, speaking at the 2008 World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, announced a four-year, $42.8 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to Heifer International, which includes $2.5 million matching grant. Combined, the grant and Heifer-raised matching donations will secure a total of $45.3 million for the East Africa Dairy Development (EADD) project, which will help farmers in Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda achieve better livelihoods through dairy farming — significantly increasing household income through profits generated from the production and marketing of high-quality milk.
Gates said that Heifer will lead the project with two partner organizations as subcontractors — TechnoServe, a U.S.-based enterprise development organization, and the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) of Nairobi, Kenya. Heifer has four country programs in East Africa, which center around integrated livestock farming. Before the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation grant, project participants may have received dairy cattle, goats, camels, bees, donkeys or fish. Projects typically incorporate gender equity and HIV/AIDS training, as well as leadership development and values-based planning for community development. The East Africa Dairy Development project focuses on dairy cows.
No Access to Real Profit
In eastern Africa, it’s almost impossible for subsistence-level farmers with little land and only a few cows to participate in the dairy industry or make real economic progress. Dairy cows there typically produce little milk. Even if a family’s cows could produce more milk than needed for household consumption, they would have to sell the excess immediately because of the lack of refrigeration for storage. So more than 90 percent of the milk in East Africa is sold at the farm gate or to peddlers who sell it at village markets or milk bars. But real profitability lies in becoming part of the commercial dairy industry producing consistently high-quality packaged milk products.
Heifer’s EADD project solves this problem by placing refrigerated chilling plants at strategic locations where farmers can bring their milk for storage and pickup by commercial dairies. Then even a very poor farmer with a single cow can participate in the dairy industry.
In addition to the chilling plants, the farmers need cows that produce higher quality milk. To improve cow breeds and production, the project will rely on artificial insemination using high quality bull semen to impregnate local cows. The resulting hybrid cows will inherit resistance to local diseases, while having greatly increased milk production. This is a twist on Heifer’s usual method of placing a pregnant dairy cow with a family. But since the cost of artificial insemination is only a few dollars, many more farmers will be able to participate. In this unique case, Heifer’s tradition of “passing on the gift” will mean that a participating farmer will pay for insemination services for another farmer’s livestock rather than passing along an actual animal.
The farmers will receive training in Heifer’s small community groups. These groups will be consolidated into “dairy farmer business associations,” larger groups with thousands of farmers. There will be 30 farmer business associations, each owning and managing one of the chilling plants.
A “Value Chain” of Profitability
Chilling plants are the linchpin of the EADD project - the point where even a farmer with only one or two cows may join the profitable dairy industry. “This piece falls in line with our work with
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| Nine-year-old Chantal Batamuliza has just finished milking her family's Friesian heifer in Nsinda village in Rwanda. The East African Dairy Development (EADD) project is working to ensure that women and girls have the opportunity to not only work in the dairies but to become community leaders. |
value chains,” said Kristin Grote, associate program officer in agricultural development at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Value chains refer to all the steps from producer to consumer in a single industry. In the dairy industry, this would include the farms, chilling plants, transportation lines, milk processors, sales outlets and finally the consumer.
“What we have observed,” said Grote, “is that, although there may need to be strengthening over the entire chain, there is usually one blockage point that is preventing some people from having access to markets. So this proposal fits perfectly within our strategy because it addresses chilling plants, which is the key blockage point that keeps smallholder farmers from earning higher incomes.”
Dr. Lutz Goedde, senior program officer in agricultural development at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, also praised the project for addressing the entire value chain. “It targets everything from getting animals to people and improving the quality of animals and animal-husbandry practices to actually having a market for the products the animals are producing. Farmers can produce more milk or more crops but then there is no market for them. But in this project we are making sure that the additional products that are produced by the farmers can generate better incomes.”
Gender Equity Critical to Success
Heifer’s EADD project also has a gender component that ensures the participation of women, not only as participants but as leaders in the business associations. This suits not only Heifer’s cornerstone value of gender equity, but the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s focus on the 1 billion people living on less than a dollar a day, of whom a disproportionate number are women.
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| Two young Rwandan children benefit from milk produced by Heifer-provided cows. Families can use money earned by selling extra milk to send their children to school. |
“We believe agriculture is important to help people come out of poverty. That is the underlying paradigm,” Goedde said. “Livestock is an important part of that area because a lot of the people engaged in it are women, especially in sub- Saharan Africa. Women are the livestock keepers.”
Heifer’s proposal to generate higher quality milk from improved cows and a collection system that accommodates poor farmers struck the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation as a successful way to help people in East Africa improve their income and nutrition, which would lead to better education, housing, health care and quality of life.
“Heifer makes a good partner for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation,” Dr. Goedde said. “Heifer is obviously one of the leading organizations doing this in the world, and we’re very happy to partner with Heifer for their reach.”
Jo Luck, president and CEO of Heifer said, “The foundation’s support and recognition of our values based model, and the size and scope of the project, take Heifer to a new level in our endeavors to help the poor overcome poverty. We’re proud to have been selected by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and appreciate the confidence placed in our work.”
The East Africa Dairy Development project will be administered by Heifer’s Africa Program staff at its Little Rock, Ark., headquarters and by its in-country staff in Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda.
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