We hereby introduce the release of part 2. of our retrospective titled Sustainable business models and scaling (Summary Report). The report provides a summary of the lessons learned regarding the business aspects of the G4AW Facility.
Since 2013, the G4AW programme has been supporting 25 partnerships in 15 countries in Africa and SE Asia that have taken up the challenge to develop digital solutions, using satellite and geodata to improve food and income security at food producer level. The major lessons learned from the last 7 years are summarized in the retrospective: Space for Food Security: Stimulating smallholders' access to emerging AgTech and FinTech markets.
The first publication (“Part I: users and services”) focused on the developed services. This second publication focuses on the business-related decisions and the steps taken to move towards a sustainable business model and scale to other services and/or regions. The main challenge of compiling this report was to differentiate the plans, potential-, and current practices from each other. Some partnerships have already abandoned their business orientation, while others have taken major steps towards becoming financially sustainable.
Only several years after the programmes completion will it’s success become clear. In this report we thus present observations and insights into the steps taken, underlying reasoning, and future plans of the partnerships under the G4AW facility. While we cannot give a clear conclusion, we do provide recommendations based on common denominators.
A non-exhaustive list of questions that are addressed in the report: