About the Webinar
In agricultural development, support projects are traditionally built around the individual criteria of specific funders and the isolated methodologies of service providers. Each project operates as a standalone initiative—leading to duplication, inefficiency, and misalignment across the sector. This needs to change.
In 2024, leading specialists in assessment, technical assistance, and funding launched AgriGRADE: a shared infrastructure designed to tackle the pitfalls of fragmented development support.
Applied for the first time across 86 farmer organizations in Kenya and Tanzania, this unified pathway supports sustainable professionalization. Reassessments conducted in mid-2026 reveal the early impact of this data-driven approach—showing how aligned actors can graduate farmer organizations more effectively while uncovering critical next steps.
In this webinar, key AgriGRADE implementers candidly debate what the data does and doesn’t reveal, the challenges experienced, and the road ahead. Unfiltered by heavy slide decks, our panel dives into the hard realities of cooperative progression in an interactive, talk-show style format where you can observe or jump in with your own questions.
🎤 Speakers
Vanessa Rizzi – Head of Business Development of SCOPEinsight, Italy
Raymond F. Lyimo – Senior Cooperative Advisor at Agriterra, Tanzania
Judy Kithinji – Managing Consultant at Policy and Market Options (PMO), Kenya
Moderated by Cees van Rij – Director of AgriGRADE, Netherlands
Why You Should Attend
- End Sector Fragmentation: See how a shared evidence base eliminates assessment fatigue and aligns key actors.
- Empower Specialist Providers: Discover how a unified pathway enhances—rather than restricts—the work of technical assistance experts.
- Set Realistic Milestones: Learn how much progress a farmer organization can realistically achieve within a single year.
- Unpack Surprising Data Paradoxes: Explore why revenue rose in Kenya while profit margins slipped, and why active membership fell as enrollment grew.
- Spot Regional Bottlenecks: Compare first-year data to pinpoint hidden operational challenges unique to Kenya and Tanzania
Pre-read: Explore Our 1-year Reassessment Highlights
Under the title “Farmer Organizations Are Progressing. Can the Support System Progress with Them?”, we have published highlights of the initial results in Kenya and Tanzania, including country-level comparative data, bottlenecks, and our road ahead.
Reading these highlights is the ideal preparation for our candid live discussion, though there’s no obligation, of course.
Who Should Attend
- Business Development Providers
- Cooperative leaders
- Financial Institutions
- Policy Makers
- Agribusiness Stakeholders
- Anyone involved in strengthening Farmer Organizations