Impact Fund

Each year, the Achmea Foundation’s project committee selects a number of new innovative projects to support in the sub-Saharan countries of Africa. In 2023, the Achmea Foundation selected six new innovative projects in the field of healthcare and improving incomes of small-scale farmers in Africa to support. Also in 2023, this selection process was carried out by the Agile project committee.

Achmea Foundation invests in projects through donations, loans and/or by providing 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 Healthcare and Income for today and tomorrow.

With the six new projects, the Achmea Foundation supported a total of 21 ongoing projects in 2023. Ongoing projects are intensively monitored. The Achmea Foundation remains involved with the partner organisations, including the teams implementing projects locally. Every year, the Achmea Foundation visits a number of projects on location to see if the intended impact can be realised. This year, three projects in Rwanda and two projects in Tanzania/Kenya were visited. Gupta Strategists, an independent agency, also performs one or more evaluations each year. They analyse Achmea Foundation Impact Fund projects. This year it was GOAL 3's Kumbatia project.

New initiatives

Impact Fund supported six new impactful initiatives in 2023

The six new initiatives supported by the Impact Fund are all making an impact in their own way. Read below how the projects are making an impact.

Onion project in Guinea and Senegal - EUCORD

The Basalle Setto project is an ambitious project that has the potential to have a positive impact on Guinea's agricultural sector. The project aims to promote sustainable agricultural practices, create new markets and improve farmers' living conditions. At the heart of this project is the use of a new type of onion seed, allowing onion production during the rainy season. This was not possible before and led to a high dependence on imports.

Objective: Increase the income of small-scale farmers in Guinea and improve their standard of living by supporting onion production during the rainy season.

Impact:

  • The project expects onion productivity to increase by 50 per cent during the rainy season.
  • The project expects farmers to have easier access to the inputs and finance they need to produce onions.
  • The project expects farmers to have easier access to storage facilities and markets for their onions.
  • The project expects to increase farmers' income by €2,000 a year.

Value Based Care Model in Ghana – PharmAccess

Non-communicable diseases (NCDs) are the leading cause of mortality in Sub-Saharan Africa. Hypertension is a major NCD that can lead to cardiovascular disease, stroke and other serious health problems. In Ghana, care for hypertension is often ineffective. Patients often do not get the right diagnosis or treatment, and there is a lack of access to quality care. PharmAccess, the National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA) and the Christian Health Association Ghana (CHAG) are collaborating on a new project to improve hypertension care in Ghana. The project focuses on developing and testing a value-based care model. A value-based care model is an approach that focuses on achieving patient-important outcomes at optimal cost. This means that all stakeholders, including patients, providers and payers, work together to improve patient care and control costs.

Objective: Developing and testing a value-based care model for hypertension in Ghana.

Impact:

  • Reducing the prevalence and morbidity of NCDs.
  • Improving quality of life for patients with NCDs.
  • Healthcare savings.rg.

Farm Incubator in Malawi – aQysta

This project by aQysta aims to introduce the first solar energy processing plant in Malawi. The aim is to provide farmers with a comprehensive solution, from providing seeds, input materials, finance and knowledge to grow crops, to processing them and finding suitable markets. What makes this project truly unique is the promotion of organic farming. This not only increases the value of processed crops, but also improves soil health and promotes climate resilience.

Objective: Improving the living conditions of farmers in Malawi through organic farming and processing through solar energy.

Impact:

  • By promoting organic farming practices, farmers can achieve higher yields and better incomes. This will enable them to produce enough food for themselves and their families.
  • By building a solar energy processing plant, the project can process crops into products suitable for the domestic and export markets. This will create new jobs in the agricultural sector and boost Malawi's economy.
  • The project promotes sustainable agricultural practices, such as the use of organic fertilisers and maintaining soil fertility. This will contribute to a more sustainable agricultural sector in Malawi.
  • The project uses solar energy to process crops. This will help reduce carbon emissions and mitigate climate change.

Kustawi Project in Rwanda – GOAL 3

Healthcare in developing countries is often underdeveloped and has limited resources. The IMPALA system is a patient monitoring solution that helps health professionals better monitor their patients (often young children) and detect possible deterioration at an early stage. This can lead to improved care for patients and a reduction in deaths. The "GOAL 3 Kustawi" project focuses on implementing the IMPALA system in six new hospitals in Rwanda. The project aims to develop a scalable distribution strategy for the IMPALA system to make it accessible to a large number of hospitals in East Africa.

Objective: A scalable distribution strategy for the IMPALA system, a patient monitoring solution for hospitals in resource-constrained environments.

Impact:

  • Improved care for patients in hospitals in Rwanda and other countries in East Africa (GOAL 3 is also active in Malawi and Tanzania)
  • Increased efficiency of health workers
  • Reduced healthcare costs

Cookstoves in Rwanda – Fair Climate Fund

"Cooking as a Business" is an innovative approach to improve the financing of clean cooking in developing countries. By using carbon markets, the project can make a significant contribution to improving health and climate. Approximately 2.6 billion people worldwide use solid fuels such as firewood and charcoal for cooking. This leads to health problems (mainly for women and children), as well as massive deforestation and climate change. Clean cooking is one of the best solutions to improve this situation. Clean cooking means using high-efficiency cookers (cookstoves) that use less fuel and produce fewer greenhouse gas emissions.

Objective: Financial incentive for low-income households in developing countries to cook clean.

Impact:

  • Increase in use of clean cookware and fuel by low-income households
  • Improving the health of low-income households
  • Reducing greenhouse gas emissions

Banana Business in a Box in Tanzania en Kenia – Maua Mazuri/Growing Impact

Banana Business in a Box was developed by the Maua Mazuri company in Tanzania. The project focuses on transforming the lives of small-scale farmers by giving them access to high-quality banana tree seedlings and support in planting and managing their banana trees. The project offers an all-in-one solution for small-scale farmers, including financing, seedlings, a business plan, digital support and sales agreements. The funding is intended to help farmers cover the cost of seedlings. Specially grown in a laboratory, the seedlings produce as much as four times more bananas than traditional planting materials. The project has the potential to have a significant impact on banana production in Tanzania. It can help improve food security, boost economic development and promote agricultural sustainability.

Objective: Transforming the lives of small-scale farmers in Tanzania by giving them access to high-quality banana tree seedlings and support in planting and managing their banana trees.

Impact:

  • Increased banana production and income for small-scale farmers in Tanzania and Kenya.
  • Improving the living conditions of small-scale farmers and their families.
  • More sustainable banana production in Tanzania and Kenya.

Monitoring and Evaluation by Gupta Strategists

In spring, Gupta Strategists evaluated the GOAL 3 project

The Achmea Foundation monitors all projects to which it gives a donation or loan. The Achmea Foundation aims to be a so-called engaged donor. With all the knowledge and expertise available to the foundation's network, we can add value for our project partners with positive critical feedback. We monitor projects by having regular contact with the project organisations. Monitoring & Evaluations are also carried out and discussed in the Board. Each year, we have an external party, Gupta Strategists, conduct one or more evaluations on one of our projects. The Achmea Foundation believes in the importance of evaluating projects as a means to ensure they are and remain sustainable, including in the future.

GOAL 3 aims to reduce child mortality by implementing monitoring systems in hospitals. Infant mortality is still high in hospitals in Southeast Africa due to scarcity of personnel and resources. Many hospitals in Southeast Africa, including in Malawi, Rwanda and Tanzania, are facing personnel and resource shortages. Because personnel must divide their attention among many patients, they often fail to diagnose and take action in time.

GOAL 3 provides a monitoring system (IMPALA) for Intensive Care or Medium Care wards in hospitals to monitor the vital signs of babies and children for more targeted action. The IMPALA system is designed for hospitals in resource-poor areas, with robust hardware and specially developed software. GOAL 3 offers hospitals a combination of the monitor, the tablet, an implementation process with training and maintenance of the monitor, including software updates. The use of the IMPALA system ensures that conditional changes in children can be identified earlier, enabling medical staff to take action more quickly.

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. A description of these visits is given below. Our interest in the projects is greatly appreciated by the organisations' local teams. It is useful for us to visit the site to see how the projects are being implemented, and this also helps in the collaboration with the local teams of the organisations responsible for the project implementation.

The Irrigate to Win project, the Sunflower project and the Kumbatia project in Rwanda

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.

EUCORD's Irrigate to Win project has now been completed. The aim was to test sustainable financing solutions to improve access to irrigation technology. The donation was used to support 19 farmer cooperatives in eastern Rwanda in facilitating loans to purchase irrigation equipment. The project also helped improve production of both food crops and vegetables, irrigation technologies and access to local and export markets.

EUCORD's Sunflower project supports farmers in increasing sunflower production. Rwanda imports large amounts of sunflower oil every year, which has become more expensive since the war in Ukraine. EUCORD's local team helps farmers improve yields, connect sunflower oil processors with local farmers and improve the entire value chain by organising sunflower farmers into cooperatives, strengthening their position in larger markets.

The ACORN project and the Banana Business in a Box project in Tanzania and Kenya

Kaderes is currently implementing the Agroforestry Carbon Removal Units (ACORN) project. Kaderes helps smallholder farmers adopt agroforestry. This has many benefits for farmers: it increases climate and weather resistance, diversifies nutrients, improves yields, spreads harvest times and diversifies their income streams. Planting fruit trees (mango, avocado, banana) among coffee trees absorbs harmful greenhouse gases and releases oxygen. This oxygen can then be converted into carbon removal units (CRUs) through the ACORN 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 project is jointly funded together with the Rabobank Foundation.

Maua Mazuri (Banana Business in a Box) is working with Kenya's Wanda Agricultural Group (WAG) to make banana tree seedlings available (with the help of our loan) to 600-800 vulnerable small-scale farmers in Kenya over the next two years. They call this Banana Business in a Box (BBB). With the purchase of one BBB, a sustainable business can be built step by step, financed by own funds and hard work. In addition to improving the livelihoods of 800 farmers and food security for many others, this project will also highlight how to successfully expand access to finance for the lowest income groups in Eastern Africa.