About AGMARK
Agricultural Market Development Across Africa

Why AGMARK

Across East Africa, agricultural development programs face a common structural problem: the networks they build dissolve when project funding ends, and the next program often starts from scratch. AGMARK exists to solve that problem, and the evidence is in the adoption rates.

• We are embedded, not parachuted in. AGMARK was founded in Kenya in 2004 by people who grew up in East African agriculture. Twenty-two years later, we still operate from a single Nairobi office serving the region. We have no international headquarters; the field is the headquarters.
• We build networks, not events. AGMARK pioneered the Hub and Spoke Model, now widely adopted across the continent, in partnership with the African Fertilizer and Agribusiness Partnership (AFAP). The model invests in larger hub agro-dealers who in turn service smaller rural retailers across a defined circuit. The result is a distribution system that keeps delivering quality inputs to remote farmers year after year, long after any single project has closed.
• Our adoption rates are independently documented. Farmers working through AGMARK-trained agro-dealer networks adopt new technologies at rates of 60 to 90 percent, compared with around 40 percent in conventional development programs. A University of Nairobi study found AGMARK-trained agro-dealers increased input sales by over 100 percent between 2004 and 2010.
• We are trusted by institutional funders. USAID, the World Food Programme, AGRA, IFAD, the European Union, the African Development Bank, the Rockefeller Foundation, COMESA, AFAP and others have entrusted AGMARK with multi-million-dollar programmes across the region. The Kenyan Ministry of Agriculture requires individuals to be trained by AGMARK to participate in certain government input subsidy programs.

Our Mission

To improve incomes and food security for smallholder farmers across Africa by strengthening the agricultural value chain end to end; from input supplier to last-mile retailer to farmer to output market.

Our work is grounded in a simple operating principle: smallholder farmers adopt climate-smart and regenerative practices when those practices are accessible through trusted local agri-entrepreneurs, economically viable within functioning value chains, supported by technical knowledge and inclusive finance, and connected to reliable output markets where the resulting produce earns a fair price.