Kickstart International

Headquartered in nairobi, kenya, Kickstart designs and distributes irrigation tools across 17 countries in sub-saharan africa, providing smallholder farmers and their families a sustainable path out of poverty through increased income, climate resilience, and food security. With simple irrigation tools, farmers no longer depend on seasonal rains to grow food, enabling households to consume and sell their harvests throughout the dry season and in times of drought. To cost-effectively scale its impacts, Kickstart works with over 350 mission-aligned ngos, relief agencies, micro-finance institutions, and grassroots organizations to introduce irrigation to their networks of farmers. To encourage public awareness at the grassroots and generate demand for small-scale irrigation, Kickstart conducts a range of farmer outreach and training activities, including sessions on low-volume irrigation, usage, and maintenance of Kickstart's tools, and agropreneurship best practices. This training framework empowers farmers with skills and knowledge on sustainable irrigation and water management, agricultural biodiversity, planting strategies, crop storage, commercial optimization, and key financial acumen. In fy23 (july 2022 - june 2023), Kickstart's irrigation solutions helped farmers start 9,800 successful agricultural businesses that are collectively generating approximately $6.9m in new profits and wages per year and have enabled over 49,000 people to disrupt the cycle of poverty across sub-saharan africa. To date, Kickstart has helped over 1.5 million people to climb out of poverty; created 280,000 profitable farming businesses; and feeds over 14 million people with nutritious fruits and vegetables annually.to bring our tools to as many farmers as possible, Kickstart expanded its partnerships with local and national ngos, mfis, governments, and relief agencies to generate impacts in livelihoods, women's empowerment, youth engagement, and conservation across our three regional hubs in sub-saharan africa. Kickstart also worked to strengthen local agricultural value chains and distribution networks for its irrigation tools.across sub-saharan africa, Kickstart worked with public and private partners to reach new groups of farmers experiencing the intensifying impacts of climate change, including prolonged droughts and floods, to build greater resilience to future weather shocks. Following the destruction wrought by cyclone freddy, Kickstart, worked within emergency cluster groups and the government of malawi to ensure that thousands of affected farmers could keep growing food and are equipped to withstand future weather disasters.over the past year, Kickstart launched its newest lowest-cost irrigation pump (starter pump) in uganda, south sudan, mozambique, malawi, zambia, kenya, and rwanda. In each country, we introduced the pump to partners, farmers groups, and key stakeholders in the private sector and in government.in east africa, Kickstart began hiring staff in tanzania to expand the take-up of irrigation to help small-scale farmers adopt climate-smart farming using the starter pump. Kickstart also began scaling up work in south sudan by distributing hundreds of starter pumps to communities where people need tools to achieve food security and build sustainable livelihoods. And in rwanda, Kickstart established a significant new ngo partnership that will strengthen the livelihoods of farmers through training on pump usage and agropreneurship (farming as a business) training.in kenya, Kickstart and one of our ngo partners launched our rent to try and buy pilot project in which enterprising youth "irrigation agents" are recruited and trained by Kickstart to promote irrigation by renting Kickstart pumps to groups of smallholders in their local communities. Irrigation agents earn money from both rental fees and commissions for each new pump sold through shops operated by Kickstart's ngo partner. To support each agent, Kickstart and a private sector partner developed a tablet crm app that tracks information on rental rates, commissions, rental schedules, and training activities.in southern africa, Kickstart added new partnerships with local ngos to create opportunities for communities that blend irrigation with climate positive practices and conservation goals. In mozambique, Kickstart began scaling its work with conservation partners to assist local farmers boost coffee production, regenerate their coffee tree stock, and strengthen coffee nursery capacities-part of a holistic effort to reduce poaching. We also partnered in a project in northern mozambique to rebuild/restore forest buffer zones via support for horticultural livelihoods. In malawi, Kickstart expanded its partnerships with conservation organizations and game parks that provide alternative livelihoods to communities in fragile bio-diverse ecosystems, helping people build profitable agricultural livelihoods and develop regenerative farming practices instead of cutting trees for timber and charcoal. And in zambia, Kickstart worked with a partner to distribute over 2,000 irrigation pumps to their dairy farm cooperatives, thereby improving water access for livestock and helping to increase milk production.kickstart continued to work closely with our partners to support livelihoods in communities experiencing political violence, including displaced populations in mozambique, nigeria, and zambia. In northeast nigeria, Kickstart provided pumps and training in conflict-affected regions of borno, adamawa and yobe, boosting crop and livestock farmer livelihoods by improving the water supply in crisis-affected zones. Over 1,000 Kickstart pumps were placed in the hands of farmers and herders.