Smallholder Farmers and the Road to Food Sovereignty

Three years ago, the Nkwen farming cooperative in Bamenda was on the Foundation's food distribution list. Twelve families, all smallholder farmers, all struggling to produce enough to feed themselves through the dry season, let alone generate income.

Today, the cooperative is off the distribution list. Not because the Foundation stopped caring — but because the cooperative no longer needs it.

The shift began in 2021, when the Foundation's Hunger Alleviation programme introduced an agricultural training component alongside its food distributions. The training covered soil health, water conservation, crop rotation, and post-harvest storage — practical techniques that could be implemented with the resources the farmers already had.

“We used to wait for the food parcels. Now we are the ones with food to share. That is not a small thing. That is everything.”

"We used to wait for the food parcels," says the cooperative's chairperson, a woman who has farmed the same land for twenty years. "Now we are the ones with food to share. That is not a small thing. That is everything."

The cooperative's transformation did not happen overnight. The first year of training produced modest results — better yields, but not yet surplus. The second year, with improved techniques and better seed varieties sourced through the Foundation's agricultural network, the results were more significant. By the third year, the cooperative was producing enough to supply two local markets.

The income from market sales has been reinvested in the cooperative — in better tools, in a small storage facility that reduces post-harvest losses, and in a savings fund that the members draw on during the dry season instead of depending on food aid.

The Foundation's role in this story is real but limited. The training was provided. The seed varieties were sourced. The connection to market buyers was facilitated. But the work — the actual farming, the cooperative management, the decision-making — was done by the twelve families of Nkwen.

"That is how it should be," says the programme coordinator. "Our job is to provide what communities need to build their own food security. Not to build it for them."

The Nkwen model is now being replicated with three other cooperatives in the region. The Foundation is also working with the cooperatives to document their practices and share them with other farming communities — turning the knowledge generated by one community's transformation into a resource for others.