Highlights
In Malawi, a local cotton seed multiplication system supplied 149 metric tonnes of seed to 28,782 farmers. This slashed seed costs from $35/kg to $5/kg, generating an estimated €4 million in savings and boosting yields to 1.6 tonnes/ha.
In Mozambique, the Farmer-to-Market digital tool enhanced smallholder bargaining power and transparency. This crucial intervention protected an estimated €6.3 million in incomes for 9,872 Africa Foods farmers against unfair pricing reductions.
In South Africa, smallholder farmers secured consistent formal market access. Participants now reliably deliver 650 bunches of fresh produce twice a week, and 11 tons of squash and pumpkins weekly, to major retailer Pick n Pay.
In Zambia, the Hooves for Sustainability programme successfully restored 150,000 hectares of vital rangelands. Sustainable grazing was beneficial for farmers, with 81.3% reporting increased livestock income and 64.6% reporting improved calving performance.
In Zimbabwe, our Virtual Design Studio equipped 41 small- and medium-sized local leathercraft enterprises with advanced digital skills, slashing design time from three days to 45 minutes. This enabled them to deliver 4,100 pairs of shoes to major retail chains like Edgars and Jet.
Results
13,750
farmers with increased income
168,584
hectares under sustainable management
44,855
farmers obtain new or improved services
Making small-scale farmers thrive
In 2025, we scaled climate-smart innovations, built inclusive digital business ecosystems, linked farmers to rewarding formal markets and drove landmark policy reforms to ensure smallholders thrive.
Reaching over 120,000 farmers over five years, our interventions drove exceptional productivity and climate resilience. In 2025 alone, we brought 162,861 hectares under sustainable management. In Mozambique, biochar implementation nearly doubled cotton yields to 600kg/ha, while in Zambia, combining biochar with manure elevated yields to a staggering 2,067kg/ha. Our livestock initiatives successfully restored 150,000 hectares of rangelands, resulting in 81.3% of participating farmers reporting increased livestock income. Across diversified systems, 74.2% of our farmers reported improved farm incomes, proving that our regenerative agriculture approaches directly strengthen rural livelihoods.
We built robust digital and physical architectures of inclusion, enabling 205,299 farmers to access vital new services. In Malawi, a localized seed system produced 149 metric tonnes of seed for 28,782 farmers, dramatically cutting costs from $35/kg to $5/kg and generating an estimated €4 million in savings. Digitally, we scaled the Cotton Information Management System to register 22,000 farmers, ensuring secure electronic payments.
We dramatically enhanced the bargaining power of smallholders, protecting an estimated €6.3 million in incomes for nearly 10,000 Africa Foods farmers using the Farmer-to-Market (F2M) digital tool. In enterprise development, our Virtual Design Studio in Zimbabwe reduced product design time from three days to 45 minutes. This efficiency enabled 41 local small- and medium-sized enterprises to secure formal supply agreements, delivering 4,100 pairs of shoes to major commercial retail chains. In South Africa, smallholders established consistent supply chains to major retailer Pick n Pay, delivering 11 tons of produce weekly.
We advanced inclusive governance by successfully supporting the establishment of national agricultural standards, including ZAMGAP in Zambia and MozBoPA in Mozambique, creating safer, sustainable food systems. In Zambia, our multi-stakeholder advocacy directly contributed to the landmark enactment of the Cotton Act of 2025, ensuring fairer distribution of value. By the end of the strategy, 46 corporate partners were actively implementing sustainability solutions across the region, cementing our influence on private sector standards.
Change that Matters stories
African smallholder farmers are leading the way in adopting tools that make agriculture more inclusive, resilient and efficient, now they need access to resources to continue the trajectory. Humphrey Nxumalo, Head of Programmes at Solidaridad Southern Africa, shares his perspective on the promising future of smallholder farming across the continent.
Discover five ways that biochar – a unique soil amendment with powerful properties – can improve soil fertility, support water retention, improve crop yields, contribute to removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, and more. Solidaridad is working with small-scale farmers and entrepreneurs across seven countries to leverage biochar to find new opportunities.
The Promoting Regenerative Agriculture for Sustainable Livelihoods (PRASL) project is a partnership between Solidaridad, HEINEKEN Africa Foundation, Kvuno and Hiveonline. With this programme in Mozambique, we work on fostering smallholder farmers’ efforts in regenerative agricultural practices that restore ecosystems, enhance soil health, and build resilient communities.
Sustainability Solutions
Pioneering Digital and Climate Innovations
The adoption of technological innovation requires long time horizons and must be directly linked to clear financial incentives (such as productivity gains or input cost reductions) to achieve widespread adoption. It’s exciting to see a few innovative solutions now reaching scale.
In 2025, Solidaridad championed cutting-edge sustainability solutions across Southern Africa. At the forefront was Z’wardy, an innovative digital incentive mechanism linking farmer data with tangible reward systems to encourage the rapid adoption of climate-resilient agricultural practices
We also scaled the Virtual Design Studio, equipping small- and medium-sized rural enterprises with advanced digital design skills to lower costs and elevate quality. To combat severe climate pressures, we mainstreamed biochar production and sustainable rangeland management, proving that localized climate adaptation is highly scalable.
Organization and Governance
Commitment to operational excellence
In 2025, Solidaridad in Southern Africa navigated leadership transitions with robust interim management, while maintaining an exceptional 92% staff engagement. We became a fully data-driven organization, launching the Witni dashboard to maximize our evidence-based impact and future resource mobilization.
In 2025, Solidaridad demonstrated remarkable organizational resilience and a steadfast commitment to operational excellence. A primary organizational development was successfully navigating an unexpected leadership transition. Following a sudden vacancy in the Managing Director position, we applied our internal succession planning framework by deploying an interim Management Council.
Comprising four senior leaders (the Head of Programmes, Financial Controller, Head of Programme Quality and Impact, and the Regional Human Resources Manager), this collaborative leadership model ensured seamless operational stability, strategic continuity and collective decision-making. This transition highlighted the strength of our internal leadership bench and guaranteed that our critical programme delivery to smallholder farmers continued without disruption.
Another major organizational milestone was the structural realignment of our digital innovation entity, KVUNO. We initiated a separation of payroll systems to support KVUNO’s operational independence while ensuring strict compliance with country-specific statutory requirements
Furthermore, following an independent governance review, we took decisive action to formally integrate KVUNO as a direct subsidiary of Solidaridad. This strategic integration addresses identified governance gaps by establishing a robust oversight framework, ensuring stringent financial accountability and fully aligning KVUNO’s digital innovations with Solidaridad’s broader organizational policies and institutional integrity standards.
Finally, we maintained a transparent and accountable approach to institutional integrity. During the year, one formal integrity issue was addressed and resolved via a formal agreement between the affected parties. The issue was then referred to an external body, while three minor concerns were efficiently and discreetly resolved internally by our designated persons of trust. These actions reflect our unwavering commitment to maintaining a safe, transparent and compliant operational environment for our staff and partners.
Our human resources strategy in 2025 centered on sustaining high employee engagement, optimizing resource mobilization and fostering continuous learning, even amidst necessary regional cost-containment measures.
A standout achievement was our exceptional staff engagement. Despite a period of leadership transition, the region achieved a phenomenal 92% response rate in the 2025 Global Staff Survey. Feedback overwhelmingly demonstrated a deeply committed and connected workforce. To maintain this positive culture, we sustained our management-led “Staff Shout-Outs” during Executive Committee meetings to recognize outstanding employee performance and dedication to our core values. We also strategically pivoted our peer recognition framework to pilot a new Business Development Initiative, which incentivizes staff to identify and share vital funding opportunities and proposal leads, driving organizational growth.
In response to a highly competitive global donor environment, we actively prioritized resource mobilization by recruiting a dedicated Business Development Writer. This strategic appointment significantly enhanced our capacity to research, draft and coordinate high-quality funding proposals. Although a broader regional recruitment freeze was implemented to carefully manage financial realities, this targeted hire ensured we are strongly positioned to secure sustainable funding for our impactful agricultural interventions moving forward.
We also remained deeply dedicated to staff capacity building. Building on a digital learning initiative that successfully onboarded 51% of our staff onto the Udemy online learning platform, we adapted to temporary budgetary constraints by heavily promoting our internal Staff Education Loan Scheme. This highly active mechanism supported numerous employees in pursuing and completing formal academic qualifications throughout the year. This ensures our teams continue to develop the advanced skills and specialized knowledge required to lead systemic agricultural transformation across Southern Africa.
| Staff in Southern Africa | Female | Male | Total |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ghana | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| Lesotho | 0 | 1 | 1 |
| Malawi | 3 | 5 | 8 |
| Mozambique | 3 | 18 | 21 |
| South Africa | 14 | 4 | 18 |
| Zambia | 6 | 10 | 16 |
| Zimbabwe | 2 | 2 | 4 |
| Total staff count | 29 | 40 | 69 |
In 2025, we significantly amplified Solidaridad’s regional visibility, effectively positioning the organization as a premier thought leader in sustainable and inclusive agricultural supply chains. Through strategic storytelling and targeted media engagement, our communication efforts reached vast audiences and unlocked critical new partnership opportunities.
Our outreach on social media expanded considerably, growing to a combined regional audience of over 6,600 followers. To document our impact, we produced highly engaging digital content, including the Regional Impact Stories Magazine and website features highlighting our successes in regenerative agriculture, digital innovation and smallholder inclusion.
Beyond our owned channels, we secured over 60 pieces of media coverage globally. A comprehensive analysis of just 34 (out of over 60) of these pieces revealed an estimated 1.54 million views and over 2,340 direct engagements across regional and international media outlets, proving the significant public and donor interest in our scalable interventions.
Furthermore, Solidaridad representatives actively shaped global agricultural policy by speaking and participating in 11 major international forums, including the Africa ESG Summit, the F20 Climate Solutions Forum and COP30 in Brazil. These high-level engagements allowed us to share evidence-based insights on climate-smart agriculture and sustainable finance directly with an estimated 3,000 to 5,000 global stakeholders, driving crucial momentum for strategic, cross-border donor partnerships.
Solidaridad accelerated its transition to a fully data-driven organization within Southern Africa in 2025, heavily utilizing real-time analytics to power adaptive management and maximize the return on donor investments. A major milestone was the launch of our new regional Projects Dashboard on Witni.
This advanced platform consolidated project data to provide management and programme teams with immediate, highly visible insights into performance indicators and implementation status. This technological leap, coupled with an enhanced Entrepreneurial Farmer Database, fundamentally transformed our internal culture. Our focus has shifted from output reporting to rigorous, outcome-focused impact measurement.
Our PMEL division led comprehensive evidence-generation initiatives that directly shaped the strategic design of our upcoming 2026–2030 strategy (MASP IV). We successfully completed critical end-of-programme evaluations for the Reclaim Sustainability! (RS!) programme across Malawi, Mozambique and Zambia, alongside the German Postcode Lottery Endline Survey.
To further position Solidaridad at the cutting edge of agricultural resilience, we conducted high-value research studies on crop insurance adoption in Mozambique and the cost-benefit drivers of digital farmer integration across Southern Africa. These studies generated highly credible, actionable evidence regarding smallholder resilience, digital agriculture and financial risk management, providing potent proof-of-concept data for our funding partners.
By consistently delivering and disseminating rigorous evaluations (showcased in part through our 2024 Project Success Stories Magazine (published in 2025), we ensure that our interventions remain highly effective, dynamically scalable and deeply attractive to global donors committed to systemic agricultural transformation.
Finance
Income, expenditure and Financial status
In 2025, Solidaridad in Southern Africa navigated leadership transitions with robust interim management, while maintaining an exceptional 92% staff engagement. We became a fully data-driven organization, launching the Witni dashboard to maximize our evidence-based impact and future resource mobilization.
| Income | |
|---|---|
| Income from individuals | € 0 |
| Income from companies | € 0 |
| Income from lottery organizations | € 0 |
| Income from government grants | € 1,222,793 |
| Income from non-profit organizations | € 894,667 |
| Income from other organizations | € 252,291 |
| Other income | € 0 |
| Total direct income | € 2,369,751 |
| Income from related (Solidaridad) organizations | € 3,165,018 |
| TOTAL INCOME | € 5,534,769 |
Total income for 2025 amounts to €4.58 million, up from €4.3 million in 2024. The funding levels have therefore remained stable, with 2025 showing modest growth.
Income from Solidaridad entities remains the primary source of funding, contributing €3.1 million in 2025, compared to €2.8 million in 2024, indicating continued strong support from funding facilitated through Solidaridad and the Dutch Ministry.
Direct (own-contracted) income remained largely consistent with the prior year, reaching €1.4 million in 2025, supported by sustained partnerships and diversified funding streams. Contributions from non-profit organisations continue to be the largest component at 56% of direct income, complemented by funding from other organisations and government grants.
Funding secured in 2024, including support from the Presidential Employment Stimulus via the IDC, the Helmsley Charitable Trust livestock initiative in Zambia and new funding from the Heineken Foundation, has continued to underpin programme implementation into 2025, contributing to overall income stability and growth.
Overall, the 2025 income profile reflects a stable and slightly strengthened funding position, with continued reliance on Solidaridad-related funding alongside gradual growth in independently contracted income. This balance supports ongoing programme delivery while highlighting the importance of further diversifying external funding sources.
| Expenses | |
|---|---|
| Activity costs | € 1,961,433 |
| Other costs | € 193,195 |
| Partners and consultants | € 1,275,285 |
| Employee expenses | € 1,974,522 |
| Balance to be paid | |
| Total direct expenses | € 5,404,435 |
| Expenditure to Solidaridad entities | € 23,000 |
| Total expenditures | € 5,427,435 |
Total direct expenditure for the period amounted to €4,452,123, primarily driven by employee expenses of €1,974,522 and activity costs of €1,862,824. Together, this reflects the organisation’s strong focus on programme implementation and delivery.
Partner and consultant costs totalled €423,478, supporting specialized technical input and collaborative project execution. Other costs remained relatively modest at €191,298, indicating controlled spending on ancillary operational requirements.
Overall, expenditure trends demonstrate a continued prioritization of human resources and direct programme activities to achieve project objectives efficiently.
A provisional surplus of €35 709 is anticipated for 2025, pending final audited results, maintaining the positive financial trajectory observed in 2024.
The official audited financial statements over 2024 will be uploaded here as soon as they are available.