Annual Report

2015 Annual Report

In 2015, CNFA celebrated its 30th year of successfully developing market-driven agricultural and livestock development initiatives. Over that period, we have helped bolster the economic welfare and food security of communities in underserved areas of 43 countries around the world.

As we look back over those 30 years, we are proud that CNFA  time and again has applied and proven the effectiveness of its commercially-oriented approach to agricultural development. And we are looking forward to continuing to design these types of programs through our newly launched CNFA Europe, which was officially registered in Belgium, Brussels during July  2015.

We often say, CNFA is an aggregation of talent. In September 2015, we held a global staff conference in Addis Ababa,  Ethiopia, bringing together our field leadership team. Our staff represents the most valuable factor of success in our organization. That’s why at our 30th anniversary event one month later, we used this milestone year as an opportunity to celebrate the hundreds of dedicated individuals both within and outside our organization who have made possible CNFA’s achievements of the past three decades.

We also recognized the contributions of our founding leaders,   John H. Costello, Frank Carlucci and John Block. Their passion, commitment and expertise to leave sustainable impacts have made our organization what it is today, and will carry us through another 30 years of success.

2015 was also a very eventful year. CNFA strengthened its partnership with one of the world-class agribusinesses – AGCO Corporation. At the end of 2015, AGCO and CNFA jointly agreed to promote agricultural mechanization within Africa through the introduction of a package of tractors and agricultural implements scaled and customized to meet the needs of African farmers.

Furthermore, CNFA and GSI- a global brand of AGCO- continued to promote grain and perishable food commodities by improving post-harvest handling and storage. This partnership focuses on reducing the multibillion-dollar food losses caused by insufficient and inadequate post-harvest infrastructures in Sub-Sahara Africa. CNFA concluded an important agreement with one of the world’s largest hazelnut processors – Ferrero. In partnership with Ferrero and USAID, CNFA is working in increasing the quality and quantity of Georgian hazelnuts which will improve the livelihoods of  up to 50,000 Georgian hazelnut producing families. Each of these new relationships will leverage our strong, mutual commitment to developing sustainable and inclusive growth in agriculture in underserved countries.

Last year likewise saw significant progress on many key projects. In arid areas of Zimbabwe, the USAID Food for Peace Amalima program taught conservation agriculture techniques to increase yields and trained more than 27,660 —nearly 15,000 of whom are female. In Ethiopia, the USAID Agricultural Growth  Program-Livestock Market Development project began the development of its Ethiopian Livestock Identification and Traceability System, a first of its kind, which will build and improve consumer confidence in Ethiopian meat and live animal products. And in Bangladesh, the Agro-Input Retailers’ Network was officially incorporated as a legal entity in the country, allowing it to continue to serve the 2,500 retail members of the USAID Agro-Inputs Project after the closure of that initiative. And those are only a few of the year’s  advances.

But CNFA has always been about looking forward to new possibilities. We believe that CNFA today—with its growing staff of more than 400 agricultural development experts around the globe, and its expanding portfolio of partnerships with the world’s leading agribusinesses—has never been more prepared to meet the challenge of feeding a hungry world. On behalf of all of CNFA, we encourage you to help us meet that challenge.

 

SYLVAIN ROY

CNFA President & CEO

 

JOHN J. CAVANAUGH

Chairman of CNFA, Board of Directors