2016-2026

PATHWAYS OUT OF POVERTY

2016-2026

Village Enterprise

Village Enterprise’s mission is to end extreme poverty in rural Africa through entrepreneurship. Its poverty graduation programme helps people lift themselves out of extreme poverty by developing sustainable livelihoods. We’ve been supporting Village Enterprise in Uganda between 2016 and 2023 and we’re now funding their operations throughout rural Sub-Saharan Africa. Village Enterprise’s bold ambition is to “graduate” 20 million people out of extreme poverty by 2030.

www.villageenterprise.org

CHALLENGE

Over 430 million people in Africa live in extreme poverty - 70% of the world’s poorest. And every day, more families in Africa are being pushed into extreme poverty because of climate change, conflict, displacement, and a lack of resources and opportunities.

ACTION

Community-based and locally-led, Village Enterprise’s poverty graduation programme equips people living in extreme poverty in rural Africa with financial support, as well as business and financial literacy training and ongoing mentoring to create climate-smart, sustainable tree-person businesses, a model that have been proven more scalable and cost-effective than traditional approaches. Village Enterprise then organises the entrepreneurs into savings groups, where they develop strong relationships and help finance one another’s businesses.

Examples of business areas include livestock, farming, small retail shops and restaurants, tailoring and beekeeping.

With our support Villlage Enterprise aims to support 230,000 individuals, the majority of which are women, to start over 75,000 sustainable businesses and lift themselves and their families – 1.5 lives – out of poverty by 2025.

IMPACT

To date, Village Enterprise has contributed to the creation of over 74,000 businesses. It has trained more than 260,000 entrepreneurs across Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Ethiopia, Tanzania, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Congo-Brazzaville, and Mozambique.

74,000