Annual Report

2021: Harvest, Learn, Grow

We support farmer organisations in their business development, so that they are able to market the products of their members in a professional way, leading to stable incomes for farmers and more sustainable food available for consumers.

1882 young entrepreneurs directly involved in our programmes. We believe that young people are the backbone of inclusive business.

In Indonesia, over 1,200 rice farmers were trained to apply the Sustainable Rice Platform (SRP) standards, through Farmer Field Schools and Demo Plots.

In Belgium, Rikolto closely accompanied 5 schools in installing a healthy, sustainable food policy, working on both food consumption and food literacy.

In the course of 2021, Rikolto supported cocoa farmers to establish 18 Village Savings and Loans Associations (VSLAs), bringing it to a total of 24 VSLAs. 574 cocoa farmers can now access finance

Facilitation of inclusive businesses: Rikolto accompanied the relationship between the cocoa cooperative Pangoa, and Óbolo Chocolate, a private company that makes internationally award-winning chocolate from bean to bar, using only organic cocoa.

In Arusha Generation Food came to an end in 2021. The graduates obtained loans at interest rates as low as 12%, compared to the average market rate of 25%, thanks to the partnership with the private sector and the establishment of a revolving fund.

In Vietnam, women are traditionally engaged in vegetable production, yet participation in leadership is often low. By the end of 2021, 43% of all leaders in vegetable cooperatives we partner with, were women.

In 2021, capacity building took place for 80 aspiring entrepreneurs, 20 business owners, 12 business development service providers and two decentralised financial service providers.

In Nicaragua, the average cocoa farm we have worked with in the past five years has seen its productivity grow to 516.35 kg of cocoa per hectare, while the national average is 304.7 kg.

In the DR Congo, we started to work with two new farmer cooperatives, CooKuru and COOPAAD. Demand for coffee was high in 2021 and farmers sold on average 95% of their harvest collectively.

In Uganda, our advocacy work has contributed to SRP (Sustainable Rice Platform) standards being adopted by national policy makers. They have been included in the 10-year national rice development strategy, which will be launched by government in 2022.

Rikolto supported 56 young cocoa farmers in setting up 10 agricultural service provision units. With Colruyt Group, Entreprise Cooperative de Saint Paul, Puratos among others, Rikolto developed an integrated approach towards a sustainable living income.

"Rikolto means harvest in the Esperanto language. 2021 was a year full of harvest, marked the end of our 5-year programme cycle."

Chris Claes - Rikolto´s executive director

2017-2021 DGD Programme Evaluation

In all countries where we ran programmes funded by our biggest donor, the Belgian Development Cooperation (DGD), endline evaluations took place under guidance of ADE, to evaluate the results and impact of our 5-year programme.

Download the reports per country

From 2017 to 2021, Rikolto enabled farmer organisations to register a significant number of new commercial partners, within the private sector (national and international) as well as the public one (local authorities, public services). In addition to brokering partnerships within the food system, Rikolto also adds value through the content it brings to the table to nurture these partnerships (experience, know-how and market studies for instance).

Global DGD-funded rice programme endline evaluation

A network organisation

In 2021, Rikolto financially supported 144 organisations in 16 countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America, compared to 136 the previous year. Of these, 62% are farmers’ organisations, compared to 55% the year before.

Apart from farmer organisations, we also closely work with – and sometimes financially support – local NGOs, commodity platforms, different national and sub-national government institutions, business service providers and/or research institutes.

Rikolto's partner organisations in 2021

Working with farmers organisations

Rikolto worked with a total of 206 farmer organisations, farmer cooperatives or farmer groups. 198 of them are supported in their business development; the remaining ones are national-level farmer unions or federations with whom we focus on advocacy work. Not all of these receive funding: we sometimes only give specific advice or provide trainings.

Globally, 104,217 farmers (67,975 men and 36,242 women) received Rikolto’s support.

22 of the farmer organisations Rikolto works with are certified ‘organic’, 16 organisations are Fair Trade certified, 4 are UTZ certified, and 6 Global GAP.

Closing the gender gap

There is still a gender gap when we look at the farmers we directly support through their organisations. 64% of the members of the farmers’ organisations we work with are men. In 2020, this was 62.5%. Women are hit hard by the pandemic. To tackle gender equality and equity, Rikolto started adopting its Global Gender Inclusion Strategy in the design of the new programmes in 2021.

Download Rikolto's Global Gender Inclusion Strategy

Planning, Learning and Accountability

Rikolto engages comprehensively in Planning, Learning and Accountability (PLA) through a monitoring and evaluation system that mainly aims to learn from successes and failures. The PLA system provides a framework for the systematic collection of data and the use of this data for continuous programme adjustments. Moreover, PLA also seeks to stimulate critical reflection internally, among colleagues working in similar interventions across the globe and with external stakeholders.

See our impact

Up until the edition of 2019, Rikolto drafted its Annual Report in accordance with the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI). As part of our new strategy development for 2022-2026, we undertook an external stakeholder consultation in January 2021. 37 stakeholders representing funders, private companies, farmer cooperatives, sector platforms, city governments, investors etc. from all regions we are active in provided their feedback on our new strategy, our data and reporting system and the Annual Report specifically. The aim hereof was a new list of ‘material’ aspects Rikolto would report on, in line with the GRI standard.

However, the external stakeholder consultation has shown us that the large majority of our stakeholders do not consider the GRI standard as an added value for organisations like Rikolto. For this reason, we have decided to abandon the GRI standard in our annual reporting. We remain committed to transparency and integrity and see this as an opportunity to improve and innovate our reporting practices, specifically as we start implementing our new strategy.

People and Organisation

In 2021, Rikolto had 170 employees worldwide, which is less than in 2020 (196). This is mainly due to the ending of a big programme in DR Congo. Several years ago, men were clearly in the majority in the organisation. In 2021, 47 % of our staff were women, slightly more than the 45% in 2020. There remains a difference between our offices in Belgium, Asia and Latin America on the one hand, and West Africa, East Africa and DR Congo on the other hand. In the last group, proportionately many more men are employed, whereas there are more women on board in the first group.

Read the full 2021 Annual Report

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Download our previous Annual Reports

Annual Report 2020