In Uganda, where dairy production is dominated by small-scale farmers living in impoverished rural areas, IFC and GAFSP supported Pearl Dairy, a leading local milk processor, establish a powdered milk processing plant and cold-storage infrastructure, which is helping facilitate milk collection from remote smallholder farms. An additional advisory services project has trained “dairy development executives” that advise 650 local farmers on techniques to improve productivity and adopt good agricultural practices, more than doubling milk production for many participants. In May 2018, Pearl Dairy graduated from GAFSP concessional support to seek funding from other sources on purely commercial terms— reinforcing GAFSP’s core philosophy that blended finance should be temporary and that our clients will one day become financially and commercially sustainable.
GAFSP Launches $75 Million Financing Window to Mobilize Private Investment into Agricultural Entrepreneurs