Self Help Africa supported more than two million people in sub-Saharan Africa last year, its annual general meeting was told in Dublin, this week.

Chairman Tom Kitt told the AGM that the organisation had reached over 315,000 households across nine African countries, supporting rural poor families to increase and diversify farm production, and source new markets for their produce.

A former Minister for Overseas Development, Mr. Kitt said that the organisation, which had increased its income in 2017 to €21.7m had introduced new crops to 160,000 households, and had helped 110,000 farmers to increase their farm production.

Self Help Africa’s annual report, which was released at the AGM showed that the organisation had secured two of the largest institution grants in its long history during 2017.  In October it won a grant worth €14m from the European Union to establish more than 13,000 community-based farmer training schools across Malawi, and in November had been awarded €22m from the EU to support agri-business creation and develop new markets for rural poor farmers in Kenya.

CEO Ray Jordan described the EU grants as ‘historic’, and told the meeting that they would enable Self Help Africa to work right across the agricultural value-chain, training rural poor households in farming methods that would enable them to get more from their land on one side, and developing agri-business opportunities so that households could earn more from the crops that they produce on their land.

Click here to see our 2017 finances and reports.

Click here to see our annual report.