Launched early in 2010, Project Nurture is an $11.5 million partnership among The Coca-Cola Company, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and the international non-profit organization TechnoServe. It intends to double the fruit incomes of more than 50,000 smallholder farmers in Kenya and Uganda by 2014 by building inclusive mago and passion fruit value chains.
Harvards CSR Initiative has analysed the project and finds some impressive achievements already:
- More than 42,000 farmers have participated in the program, 14,000 of them women
- Annual fruit incomes have, on average, already more than doubled.
- 297 loans worth $115,300 have been disbursed to finance passion-fruit farming start-up costs such as seeds, seedlings, poles, and wires.
- Coca Cola expects to recoup its investment in the project in the next 3-5 years through cost optimization and replication in other countries
Key elements of the model have been implemented in Haiti and India, with further replication being considered for Zimbabwe, Nigeria and/or Ghana. The foundation is now looking to establish similar additional partnerships for widely-grown staple crops such as rice, maize, and cassava.
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