Our Recommendation
myAgro is a strong candidate if you prioritize robust intermediate outcomes (yield, income, input access) and early signs of improved wellbeing, and are comfortable that ultimate outcomes like food security and poverty status are not yet rigorously measured with counterfactuals. Its evidence on increased production and net income, grounded in repeat harvest evaluations with comparison farmers, is among the stronger agricultural data sets, and the organisation shows real attention to learning and adaptation.
myAgro's Fierce Certification score is 110/100 based on our criteria:
✔ Has Ultimate Outcome Goals (50 pts)
✔ Measures Intermediate Outcomes (10 pts)
✔ Measures Ultimate Outcomes (15 pts)
✔ Shows Continual Learning & Adaptation (20 pts)
✔ Measures Intermediate Counterfactual (10 pts)
✔ Measures Ultimate Counterfactual (5 pts)
The Social Problem
myAgro tackles the structural under‑investment in smallholder farmers that keeps rural families in West Africa trapped in low‑productivity, low‑income agriculture. Farmers typically cannot save sufficient lump sums to buy inputs before planting, lack affordable, quality seeds and fertilizer, and get little agronomic training, leaving their yields and incomes well below potential. This contributes to seasonal hunger, chronic poverty, and limited capacity to invest in children’s education, healthcare, or productive assets that would translate higher income into better lives.
The Solution
The myAgro solution is a mobile layaway platform bundled with high‑quality inputs and climate‑smart agronomic training, designed around farmers’ cash‑flow reality. Farmers buy scratch cards or use mobile money to save small amounts over time towards a pre‑defined seed and fertilizer package. When the planting season arrives, they receive the full package without taking on debt. This is paired with participatory training and on‑farm support, increasingly focused on sustainable and climate‑resilient practices, so that farmers can use the inputs effectively, boost yields, and diversify crops and income. The underlying Theory of Change is that enabling pre‑season saving, secure access to quality inputs, and better agronomy will raise yields and net income, which farmers can then reinvest and use to improve food security, resilience, and life quality.
Key Outputs
Key outputs that contextualize myAgro’s work:
- Scale and reach: myAgro is serving tens of thousands of farmers each year across Mali, Senegal, and Tanzania; the 2022 Impact Report covered 88,000 farmers receiving core‑season products, and the organization aims to reach over one million farmers by the mid‑2020s.
- Input and training delivery: in recent years, myAgro farmers cultivated over 6,300 hectares of crops, with training designed and iterated using annual evaluations and partnerships (e.g., Bern University for climate agronomy).
- Income per farmer and total incomes: FY20 and 2022 documents report total additional income generated (e.g., 22 million USD across Mali and Senegal in 2022) and average income per farmer (around 110–395 USD depending on context), along with 24,000 tons of food grown in earlier years.
- Measurement & Evaluation infrastructure: myAgro conducts annual harvest evaluations with control farmers, has M&E methods audited as “100% compliant with industry standards,” and has run Lean Data surveys to complement quantitative impact.
These outputs point to an organization with substantial operational reach and a relatively strong measurement backbone for an agricultural enterprise.
Key Intermediate Outcomes
Intermediate outcomes with concrete evidence:
- Yield increases: myAgro farmers grew 2.5 times more food than control farmers in 2022, representing a 156% increase in production, measured through physical harvest evaluations.
- Input application despite price shocks: in a year of steep fertilizer price increases, control farmers applied 48% less fertilizer per hectare than myAgro farmers, showing that layaway packages protected input use and production potential.
- Income gains: across multiple years, myAgro reports average income gains of 110–395 USD per farmer, with the model described as increasing net income by 150–300 USD; external summaries cite nearly 200 USD additional net income per year (about a 35% boost for very poor farmers).
Key Ultimate Outcomes
Ultimate outcomes include the following:
- Self‑reported wellbeing: Lean Data results show that 35% of surveyed farmers say their quality of life has “very much improved,” 49% say crop productivity “very much improved,” and 56% attribute at least some of these positive changes to myAgro. This is direct wellbeing evidence, though not counterfactual in the strict sense.
- Food security and poverty (inferred): myAgro highlights more food grown, more food‑secure communities, and a pathway out of poverty, and the CGI commitment projects improved harvests and incomes for 280,000 farmers, affecting 2.24 million people’s access to more nutritious food by 2024. However, specific indicators such as hunger months, poverty‑line crossings, or education/health expenditures are not yet systematically measured or compared to non‑participants.
Continual Learning & Adaptation
myAgro demonstrates meaningful learning behaviour consistent with our cycle:
- Embedded experimentation: earlier reports describe an explicit “test–measure–scale” process: myAgro runs small initial trials to identify gaps, scales promising designs to 500–1,000 farmers, then integrates successful products into the core offering after measuring results.
- Robust M&E and audits: harvest and income evaluations with control farmers are conducted annually, and a third party audits M&E processes, confirming compliance with industry standards; Lean Data was commissioned to understand broader life impacts and areas for improvement.
- Adaptation to shocks and farmer feedback: 2024 reports highlight that myAgro updated its Theory of Change to emphasize farmers’ ability to reinvest and build resilience, not just harvest size, and adjusted packages and training during fertilizer price spikes and climate initiatives based on evaluation findings.
Within our four‑step framework, myAgro is strong on (1) a problem‑grounded Theory of Change connecting inputs and training to yield and income, (2) an intervention that operationalizes that theory, and (3) intermediate‑level measurement with some counterfactuals, plus a visible (4) feedback loop where evidence informs product design and strategy.
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