Supporting agricultural producers in DRC

Qualagric ASBL is a Congolese company specialized in advising, structuring and supporting farmers. The company builds the capacities of smallholder producers and structured farmers’ organizations by training them in new crop processing techniques and entrepreneurship. Prior to the project, Qualagric had supported 12,114 farmers and 2,827 cooperatives and farmers’ organizations, with 60% women. Espérance Belau, Director of Qualagric, is an entrepreneur involved in the Fédération des Entreprises du Congo (FEC), where she chairs the agri-food commission.

The technical assistance (TA) has the following objectives: enable the expansion of Qualagric’s activities by targeting access to improved seeds, promote climate-resilient farming techniques, improve the processing capacity of SMEs in the sector, market by-products, and promote agro-related industries among young people and women. 

The TA project will benefit a group of 750 producers (men, women and young people) and will increase the capacity of 3 processing units.

The project will achieve the following impacts:

• Increase in the number of producers that annually receive quality planting materials, and in the quantity of quality planting materials produced and disseminated 
• Increase in the total area sown annually, the average yield per hectare, the number of processors and producers trained, and the number of processing units allocated to producers/processors
• Improvement in farming practices and standards for processed products, preventive and corrective maintenance and the operation of processing machines, and the management of a cassava processing unit