Scaling for impact: How GitHub Copilot supercharges smallholder farmers
Empowering 10 million farm families by 2030 to generate $1 billion in new revenue. How GitHub helps One Acre Fund’s mission — driving real impact across Africa.
What started in 2006 with just 40 farm families in western Kenya has grown into a powerful movement. Today, One Acre Fund serves 5 million farm families across ten countries in eastern and southern Africa. Their ambitious goal? By 2030, they aim to support 10 million farm families annually. How? By using open source technology and AI, aiming to generate an astounding $1 billion in new revenue for these communities.
Cultivating impact with technology
For smallholder farmers — those typically working with an acre or less of land — intensifying agriculture is crucial for their prosperity. This process of producing more food with the same amount of land, not only brings higher crop yields, but stimulates the economy, strengthens community, and enables farmers to scale. One Acre Fund’s core mission is to empower these farmers, providing a direct pathway out of poverty. But unlike traditional microfinance, they don’t just loan cash. Instead, they provide vital farm resources like fertilizer and seed, plus training and services, directly equipping farmers with the tools they need to succeed. They also help the farmers they serve to improve their soil health and plant trees to not only increase yields but also help farmers be more resilient to weather changes due to climate change.
In the past, farmers used to fear using technology. But, as we provide training to them, they’re now eager to use it.
Blaise Murame, Regional Lead, One Acre Fund
Technology is at the heart of One Acre Fund’s rapid growth. They’ve transitioned from an entirely analog approach — meeting farmers in the field with paper records — to a highly digitized system. This transformation has revolutionized their operations, making everything from logistics and delivery to farmer registration and the development of training materials more efficient. Farmers, initially hesitant, are now eager to embrace this tech, after receiving resources and tools on time and achieving their goals faster than ever before.
Growing products to empower farmers
A significant part of One Acre Fund’s tech leap comes from their adoption of GitHub Copilot.
Since the coming of GitHub Copilot, the time it used to take us three weeks, that development work can be finished within a week. That’s affecting our goals – we’re able to set more goals than last year.
Yididiya Gebredingel, Developer, One Acre Fund
By introducing GitHub Copilot, One Acre Fund has been able to move much faster on their development, and they can focus on the pieces that are actually creating impact in the field. This acceleration has enabled them to set and achieve more goals, with developers completing projects three times faster and over 30% of their work being assisted by AI.
As a nonprofit, working with some of the world’s poorest populations means operating on razor-thin margins.This makes the cost-effectiveness of their solutions paramount. Open source technology provides the ideal balance, offering both “solution maturity and solution flexibility” without the burden of exponentially growing license fees as they scale. Embracing the open source community is a strategic move for One Acre Fund, as they’ve migrated most of their core operational systems to open source to leverage collaborative development and community support.
As a nonprofit, we can’t tolerate license fees that will grow exponentially as we scale. Open source gives us the right balance between solution maturity and solution flexibility.
Sarah Hylden, Global Director of Operations, One Acre Fund
Ultimately, One Acre Fund believes that if you have an intervention that works to create a sustainable pathway out of poverty for farmers, and you know it works, then you have a moral obligation to scale it. And with the help of GitHub Copilot, they are doing just that — moving faster and making a greater impact in the lives of millions of farm families.
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