Kiva conducts regular, ongoing monitoring of all Lending Partners, but only posts status updates here in response to relevant, major changes at the partner.

Important Information from Kiva about One Acre Fund:

One Acre Fund’s business model focuses on working with smallholder farmers across East and Southern Africa to promote an integrated agriculture package which includes training, reliable input supply (i.e., fertilizer, seeds), credit and insurance. 

One Acre Fund enrolls farmers in its program during the months of July through October in preparation for the following growing season. One Acre Fund also purchases fertilizer and important inputs during these months as prices in Kenya are historically low during these months, allowing cost savings to be passed on to farmers. In February of the following year, One Acre Fund delivers the pre-purchased fertilizer, seeds, and other important inputs to farmers in market areas near their farms. During the growing season, One Acre Fund continues to provide farmers with training and support, and allows farmers to make payments as frequently or infrequently as they wish. At harvest time in October, farmers are required to finish repaying their loans for which they enrolled in the previous year.

One Acre Fund loans on Kiva will:

1. Be sourced from Kenya. 

2. Have a disbursement date sometime during the months of February or March.

3. Have the input supplies delivered to growers in February for the growing season.

4. Be due in full the following October at harvest time. 

Note: Any payments collected before the official October due date will be treated as repayments on Kiva, reported by One Acre Fund, and repaid to Kiva lenders upon receipt from One Acre Fund.

Among other risks described on the Risk and Due Diligence page, Kiva lenders are also exposed to the risk associated with the possibility of major crop failure due to drought, disease or other natural disaster or uncontrollable event. In this event, One Acre Fund’s policy is to forgive the loan to the farmer to ensure that they retain sufficient resources to feed themselves and their family.

One Acre Fund provides crop insurance to borrowers in the event of severe drought. This drought insurance is weather indexed and based on rainfall data. This is currently the best data One Acre Fund has available to assess drought conditions. However, there is a risk that there is a gap between the rain index and the reality on the ground, which means that the drought insurance may not be able to fully cover the loan repayments of borrowers severely affected by drought. In the event that this happens, lenders may experience a default on a portion of the loan amount. 

From One Acre Fund:

More than 75% of the world’s poor are farmers. One Acre Fund is a non profit social enterprise that focuses on helping hard-working farm families in Africa to increase farm profit. One Acre Fund sources and delivers quality seed and fertilizer to farmers, conducts in-person, weekly agriculture trainings, and educates farmers on how to minimize post-harvest losses and how to maximize market prices. One Acre Fund delivers everything within walking distance of the farmer and is increasingly using its distribution network to promote productive products. For example, all One Acre Fund families in Kenya are eligible to receive tree seeds, solar lights, vegetable seeds, and health products. The organization started in 2006, and today serves more than 1.4 million farm families in nine countries across East and Southern Africa. Its ambition is to help spark a revolution in lending focused on the world’s tens of millions of underserved farm families.

One Acre Fund’s motto is Farmers First and the organization's values are: 

Humble Service - We meet farmers in their fields and we get our shoes muddy. Farmers are our customers and we serve them with humility.

Hard Work - We work hard every day. We execute with world-class professionalism and business excellence. Farmers deserve nothing less.

Continual Growth - We improve every season. We work with determination to meet our goals and then stretch ourselves by raising the bar even higher.

Family of Leaders - We bring together the best leaders and build long-term careers. We care for team members like family.

Dreaming Big - We envision serving millions of farm families. We build for scale with every idea and solution.

Integrity - We do what we say, and our words match our values.

Environmental Sustainability

One Acre Fund has a unique, multi-year relationship with the farmers that we serve. Unlike many organizations and companies that do a one-time training or a one-time sale, One Acre Fund is genuinely concerned about the long-term sustainability of our farm families, and we work hard to protect their environments. We believe that our farmers make a uniquely positive contribution to the long-term health of their soils and to their environments.