Impact Fund
Each year, the Achmea Foundation selects a number of new innovative projects to support in the sub-Saharan countries of Africa. We are proud to found four new innovative agricultural and health projects in Africa to support in 2022. We jointly fund one of these projects together with Rabobank Foundation.
The Achmea Foundation contributes to Achmea’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
Each year, the Achmea Foundation selects a number of new innovative projects to support in the sub-Saharan countries of Africa. We are proud to found four new innovative agricultural and health projects in Africa to support in 2022. We jointly fund one of these projects together with Rabobank Foundation.
The Achmea Foundation invests in projects by means of donations, loans and/or the provision of knowledge and expertise. In that way, we build on the local population’s own strength and empowerment. Here we want to reach a specific market by investing in innovative projects (venture capital) in the fields of agriculture, healthcare and finance.
We work with various forms of funding, the most significant of which is a loan. This is a deliberate choice, because a loan helps organisations become economically independent faster. A loan encourages individual responsibility. We put the repayment and interest received back into other applications, which enables us to fund more and more other organisations. We also offer help in the form of donations and knowledge and expertise.
Every year, the project committee selects a number of organisations that can submit a proposal for a project or initiative. Various Achmea employees from different departments help us assess these proposals. This knowledge from various departments ensures that we are able to select the right impactful projects. In early June 2022, the selected organisations had the opportunity to pitch their proposals in Zeist, the Netherlands, to the Achmea Foundation project committee and to the Achmea employees who had helped assess the applications. The Achmea Foundation is very proud of the enormous enthusiasm of our Achmea colleagues to work together to select quality initiatives for the Achmea Foundation Impact Fund. On 29 June 2022, the Board of the Achmea Foundation selected four projects for consideration for a donation or loan.
The project committee consists of four Board members: Susan Blankhart, Rajiv Ball, Kees Zevenbergen and Jan Willem Kuenen. They play an important role in the selection process. Thanks to their diverse backgrounds, knowledge and experience, they can assess project proposals in a pluralistic manner. Together with the programme manager and the director of the Achmea Foundation, the project committee selects partner organisations that have proposed an innovative project. This involves checking whether the project fits within the Achmea Foundation’s strategy. The project must fit with the themes of Bringing healthcare closer and Income for Today and Tomorrow (particularly agriculture or financial inclusion). The project committee also considers whether the project is innovative, feasible and scalable, and whether the project can continue independently in the future. Selecting project partners is an intensive process, but we want to use the available budget as effectively as possible so that we can have the greatest impact.
With the four new projects, we have a total of 21 ongoing projects in 2022. Ongoing projects are intensively monitored. We remain involved with our partner organisations, including the teams implementing projects locally. Every year, we pay on-site visits to a number of projects in spring and autumn to see if the intended impact can be realised. This year, we visited three ongoing projects in Ghana and two ongoing projects in Malawi. We also have an evaluation carried out twice a year by an independent agency, Gupta Strategists. They analyse two Achmea Foundation Impact Fund projects every year. This year, the two projects analysed were Sevi and Apollo Agriculture. In this annual report, you can read more about the working visit to Ghana and Malawi and the evaluations carried out by Gupta Strategists.
New initiatives in 2022
In 2022, the Impact Fund supported four new impactful projects. These projects are described below.
ACORN platform (Agroforestry Carbon Removal Units (CRUs) for the Organic Restoration of Nature) – Rabobank/Kaderes
Country: Tanzania Impact:
- SDG 2 – No hunger: Project provides access to carbon market, a new revenue stream and helps to maintain existing revenue stream.
- SDG 3 – Good health and well-being: Project contributes to climate mitigation and creates financial space for welfare and health.
- SDG 8 – Fair work and economic growth: Farmers learn a different, more sustainable, way of doing business and growing crops. Farmers are paid for their climate efforts. This ensures a more consistent and higher income for farmers.
- SDG 13 – Climate action: More disposable income enables small farmers to engage sustainably in other ways: more efficient irrigation, solar power, greater independence from fossil fuels.
The ACORN platform is a Rabobank programme. The project in Tanzania is being implemented in collaboration with local organisation Kaderes. What is unique about this project is that the Achmea Foundation is funding it in partnership with the Rabobank Foundation. This creates synergy benefits and enables us to share even more knowledge and make an impact.
Applying agroforestry has numerous benefits for farmers: it increases their climate and weather resilience, diversifies their nutrients, improves yields, spreads harvest times and diversifies their income streams. Agroforestry or forest agriculture are land-use systems in which the planting and/or active management of trees is combined with agriculture or livestock breeding. Planting food trees (mango, avocado, banana) and shade trees among coffee trees absorbs harmful greenhouse gases and releases oxygen. This can be converted into CRUs through the platform. Farmers can sell these CRUs through the platform to companies that want to offset their own emissions. This results in an additional revenue stream that both diversifies farmers’ income and enables the financing of the transition to agroforestry.
This initiative connects Kaderes’ mission to empower members and communities to expand their agroforestry with Rabobank’s goal of creating a better world together. The intervention requires pre-financing to bridge the time gap between the time of tree planting and technical assistance versus expected carbon revenue. Since the Acorn platform only sells actually sequestered carbon (ex-post) and trees have to grow first, carbon revenues are expected from year 2/3. Carbon revenues can serve as a means of repayment.
Safe Care and Medical Credit Fund – PharmAccess
Country: Nigeria Impact:
- SDG 3 – Good health and well-being: Main impact relates to SDG 3. Working on all facets of quality improvement will enable better health outcomes for patients.
- SDG 8 – Fair work and economic growth: PharmAccess strives to provide learning opportunities and improve the working environment for (mostly female) nurses across the board, and hence creating stronger healthcare SMEs in the case of private clinics.
PharmAccess aims to provide support to clinics through SafeCare by developing and testing a new interactive learning tool. This learning tool focuses on the most common and critical knowledge gaps among nurses. In that way, they aim to make learning easier, more effective and fun using a tool that fits within the resources and time constraints of the clinics where nurses work.
The process to achieve this consists of three phases. In phase I (Understand), they will research the learning needs of nurses. They want to study people’s intrinsic motivation so they can improve the learning experience. In Phase II (Co-creation), they work with a renowned partner in the field of learning/behavioural insights and a small number of clinics to develop and test the tool in an iterative way. In phase III (Enable and engage), they plan to roll out the tool to a larger selection of clinics. They focus on embedding the use of the tool, while also promoting engagement between networks of clinics using the tool.
At the end of the project, they want to add the interactive learning tool to the quality platform as a value-added feature. 100 clinics will use the tool. They foresee an impact on more than 800,000 patients a month. By offering this learning tool to nurses, they expect clinics to be able to improve their quality more effectively, which should ultimately improve clinical care outcomes at the patient level.
Sunflower Promotion – EUCORD
Country: Rwanda Impact:
- SDG 2 – No hunger: Significant growth in agricultural productivity has been one of the main drivers of growth and poverty reduction in recent years. Sunflowers could also contribute to this. The project will increase agricultural productivity and income of small-scale food producers, particularly women and young people.
- SDG 3 – Good health and well-being: The increase in beneficiaries’ income will improve access to healthcare for all household members, because they will be able to pay for the health insurance that is mandatory for every Rwandan.
- SDG 8: Fair work and economic growth: Price of edible oil rising (due in part to war in Ukraine). Farmers have a weak economic status. Greater self-sufficiency will encourage honest work and economic growth. The project will help reduce poverty by increasing net income for 6,500 households by €892,020.
The project aims to improve the livelihoods of small farmers by generating income from the production, processing and use of sunflowers in Rwanda. The project is a direct response to the low income of smallholder farmers in Rwanda who mainly practise subsistence farming and the import of raw materials required for local food processing plants, for edible oil refineries in particular, in response to popular demand for edible oil.
The project will benefit 6,500 subsistence farming households in Rwanda. At the national level, the project will reduce dependence on imported cooking oil, thereby lowering the price of imported oil. This will be achieved by strengthening the capacity of smallholder farmers in good agricultural practices and demonstrating improved agricultural technology for sunflower production.
The sustainability of the project is assured because stakeholders are interested in the value chain. The recently established legume and oil programme of the Rwanda Agriculture and Animal Resources Development Board (RAB) is ready to help improve farmers’ access to inputs. Sunflower production also offers a benefit by encouraging integrated soil fertility management (ISFM), because it enables intercropping with leguminous crops. Another advantage is that the sunflower market is promising: demand exceeds supply and it is relatively easy for farmers to get supply contracts.
Tiko Health Program – Humaniforest
Country: Kameroen Impact:
- SDG 2 – No hunger: Income will increase. Medical costs will decrease: lower medical bills, less absenteeism from school, farms and jobs. As a result of higher income, this project also contributes to SDG 2.
- SDG 3 – Good health and well-being: Less malaria and water-related diseases naturally lead to a healthier population. A tube-fed water system will provide reliable, clean drinking water all year round.
- SDG 8 – Fair work and economic growth: Directly through jobs within the social enterprise Humaniforest and with service providers, indirectly as a result of better health and increased income and well-being.
Malaria is a pandemic in the world’s tropical regions, including the mangroves of Cameroon, which provide a fertile breeding ground for mosquitoes. The Tiko communities in this project, with more than 10,000 households and 60,000+ inhabitants, are located in the heart of Cameroon’s mangroves.
In addition to malaria, water-related diseases (cholera, typhoid, diarrhoea) are a major burden on the health and spending of Cameroonian households. The WASH programme linked to this project is an incentive to promote product use and acceptance of EaveTubes in these mangrove communities, while at the same time reducing water-related diseases, significantly improving health. This is a combined project with goals to improve the health situation in Tiko (Cameroon) for a base of 6,000 households and in turn also reduce the cost of healthcare for affected households.
Part of the project relates to clean water supply that helps prevent related diseases. The second part is about reducing the risk of malaria using a new technique (In2Care's existing EaveTubes). The clean water project has been successfully implemented previously in several locations. The Malaria portion is a relatively new material in Cameroon. The combination of the two projects is important to gain public confidence in the first instance and at a later stage to reduce the operational costs of a local office by sharing them between the two projects.
Monitoring & Evaluation by Gupta Strategists
The Achmea Foundation monitors all projects to which they have given a donation or loan. The Achmea Foundation aims to be “an engaged donor”. With all the knowledge and expertise available in the Foundation’s network, we can add value to our project partners through positive critical feedback. We monitor projects by having regular contact with the project organisations. Monitoring and evaluations are also carried out and discussed in the Board. Twice a year, we have an evaluation carried out by an external party, Gupta Strategists, on one of our projects. We believe it is important to evaluate projects because we want projects to be and remain sustainable. Including in the future.
In spring, Gupta Strategists conducted an evaluation on SEVI’s project in Kenya.
Sevi aims to make credit accessible and affordable for small entrepreneurs in Kenya. SEVI offers an order now, pay later service in Kenya. SEVI makes credit for purchasing stock accessible and affordable to entrepreneurs in developing countries through value chain financing using a smartphone app. This works as follows: A buyer (for example, the owner of a small shop) orders the desired products from a seller in the app and simultaneously takes out a loan from SEVI. The buyer repays this loan in instalments. The seller (for example, a broker) receives payment in two parts: 1) 80% upfront payment from the SEVI fund at the time of delivery and 2) 20% when the buyer pays off the loan in full. This catalyses entire value chains by providing a solution for the lack of working capital.
By conducting interviews with various SEVI stakeholders, Gupta Strategists was able to form a good picture of the project’s progress. The project initially suffered some delays due to COVID-19 but is now back on track. The interest rate SEVI charges is lower than alternative loans, but not yet as low as the target from the original project proposal. The initial version of the modified business model (‘order now, pay later’) has been successfully completed. Multiple sellers are connected to the platform and deliver on credit to their buyers. The current version of the app is useful for sellers and buyers. Among other things, SEVI is connected to a major mobile payment provider in Kenya (M-Pesa), a credit reference bureau (TransUnion) and an SMS service provider to allow buyers without smartphones to still use the platform. There are plans to expand the platform with full options to set up an online store.
Gupta Strategists UPTA has identified two focus areas:
- Maintain focus on implementing the current product to achieve growth to break-even as quickly as possible.
- Differentiate between customer segments to spread risk when growing.
SEVI was pleased with the outcome of the evaluation and continues to implement this project with enthusiasm and drive.
Foto Apollo Agriculture
In the autumn, Gupta Strategists conducted an evaluation of Apollo Agriculture’s project in Kenya.
Apollo Agriculture is a technology company based in Nairobi, Kenya that helps small farmers improve their profits. Apollo makes financing for small farmers commercially viable and scalable by using innovative, automated operations they have designed to meet unique needs. They offer funding opportunities to farmers who otherwise would not have access to them. They do all this using low-cost automated processes. Apollo bundles everything a farmer needs: financing, agricultural production, advice, insurance and market access, where possible. Satellite data and machine learning enable better credit decisions and automated operations keep costs low and processes scalable. Their core product is a customised bundle of high-quality seed and fertiliser, as well as agronomic advice and insurance, on credit.
Apollo provides various tools that help farmers increase their yields. These include fertiliser, seed, advice and insurance. All this on credit. Non-profit organisations such as the One Acre Fund (OAF) have shown that small farmers can double their returns and repay their loans on time.
Main objective: Funding from the Achmea Foundation contributes to Apollo’s 5-year goal of doubling the income of 1 million small-scale farmers. By 2025, they aim to have reached 1 million farmers. Current average loan per farmer is around €136. With Achmea’s investment, they hope to be able to help at least 50,000 unique farmers over the next five years.
The evaluation is based on an external review report and interviews with a number of Apollo stakeholders. The advice to Apollo is to focus on four focal points for further optimisation.
- Define a long-term effect: this gives focus, creates opportunities for future growth (different customer segment) and can improve customer retention.
- Expansion of training modules: offer additional training modules, for example, on financial literacy to support farmers in converting from subsistence to commercial farming.
- Make seed reuse part of the marketing strategy: this will increase the affordability of the products, potentially improving customer retention in a highly value-conscious customer segment.
- Support farmers to become financially resilient to generate an additional income stream, for example, by encouraging agroforestry, which can sell carbon credits while increasing crop production.
Monitoring and Evaluation by the Achmea Foundation
Twice a year, the Achmea Foundation pays a working visit to a number of projects in which they invest. In May 2022, Jan Willem Kuenen (member of the Board of the Achmea Foundation), Marjolein Verstappen (director of the Achmea Foundation until 1 June 2022) and Agnes van Daal (Director of the Achmea Foundation from 1 June 2022) visited three projects in Ghana. In November 2022, Agnes van Daal and Maaike Blansjaar (Achmea Foundation programme manager) visited two projects in Malawi. A description of these visits is given below.
Working visit to three projects in Ghana
Agnes van Daal: "Together with Jan Willem Kuenen and Marjolein Verstappen, I paid a working visit to three projects in which the Achmea Foundation invests from 1 to 5 May 2022. We were impressed by the enthusiasm and commitment of the local staff of our partner organisations. It was the first opportunity after the corona outbreak to visit initiatives again. We visited Solidaridad's Palm Oil Project, PharmAccess’ Medicine Procurement Platform and People’s Pension Trust’s Informal Sector Pension Fund.
The local project organisations had prepared a programme. The atmosphere was open and informal. It turned out to be a very successful and inspiring working visit. Together with Solidaridad, the Achmea Foundation made it possible to develop best practices and translate the model of regional service centres from cocoa to palm oil. In this way, farmers are given more income for today and tomorrow.
With the Med4All project, PharmAccess ensures that all Ghanaian residents have access to quality medication when they need it. We visited a local hospital and were impressed by the passion with which local medics improve healthcare in Ghana every day.
People Pension Holding has launched a pension fund for the informal sector through the investment of the Achmea Foundation. This enables elderly people to remain financially independent when they can no longer work and to help prevent them from falling into poverty. In this way, Achmea says the Achmea Foundation contributes to Sustainable Living. Together.”
Working visit to two projects in Malawi
Malawi is confronted with a wide range of issues. Climate change is creating unanticipated weather events. Rainy season starts later and the rain causes floods making some areas inaccessible. Malawi is not an export country so they bring few dollars into the country. Due to inflation, the local currency has little value. The result, for example, is that fuel cannot be purchased. When we were there, there was a huge shortage of petrol and diesel, leaving many cars at the roadside waiting for fresh supplies of fuel. Along with the economic situation, the country has been affected by a cholera outbreak for the past several months with many deaths already recorded.
Maaike Blansjaar and Agnes van Daal paid a working visit to two Achmea Foundation projects from 7 to 11 November 2022. Maaike and Agnes visited GOAL3's Kumbatia project and aQysta’s Barsha Pumps project. A meeting was also held with two local staff members from One Acre Fund (OAF).
GOAL3’s Kumbatia project aims to identify critical conditions in children at an early stage, enabling early and effective interventions and reducing child mortality. This is done through interdisciplinary collaboration in this project to develop a user-friendly and affordable monitor that can be implemented in environments with limited resources and capacity. We visited two hospitals where the monitors are used. Using these monitors really does make the difference between life and death.
aQysta manufactures and sells water pumps that enable irrigation in mountain areas using the power of running water. The organisation aims to harness innovation and technology for a better world. The pumps that aQysta manufactures are very low-maintenance and generate less CO2 emissions than the commonly used diesel pumps using only hydropower as their energy source. In addition, aQysta helps farmers through training, supplying seeds and manure and improving their marketing by buying and selling produce. This makes it possible for small farmers to earn more money from the crops they grow.
Here as well, Maaike and Agnes were impressed by the enthusiasm and commitment of the local staff of our partner organisations. The local project organisations shared a great deal of knowledge, creating a good picture of the progress of the projects.