CUSTOM AGRICULTURE CHALLENGE; NIGERIA
PROVEN INTERVENTION TO BE DISTRIBUTED
Taimaka was awarded D-Prize pilot funding for the distribution of post-harvest credit and storage to help farmers save and avoid lean season poverty and hunger.
Learn more about the Custom Agriculture Challenge and why distributing proven agricultural interventions can greatly improve the livelihoods of smallholder farmers.
DISTRIBUTION MODEL INNOVATION
The Taimaka Project’s mission to tackle food insecurity in Northeastern Nigeria began with the implementation of a post-harvest loans (PHL) program that delivered crop storage bags and a small loan to rural farmers to help them save their crops and sell when prices were up to 50% higher.
After a large-scale RCT with UC-Berkeley and Stanford showed that PHLs was cost-effective but lower than the bar Taimaka sets for its own work, Taimaka made the hard decision to transition away from the PHLs program in favor of another way we had begun to tackle food insecurity in the same communities – treating children with malnutrition.
Taimaka currently runs a treatment program that 1) delivers life-saving treatment to children in Nigeria and 2) serves as an incubator for cost-effective innovations that can either improve the quality, decrease the costs, or simplify the delivery of malnutrition treatment so that the 45.4 million children who need it can get it (only 20-30% currently get treatment). Because malnutrition is the leading cause of childhood deaths globally, and because millions are already spent on treatment every year, even marginal improvements can yield high impact. A reduction in the cost of treatment by just 1% would free up over $3.4 million currently spent globally on treatment to treat an additional 50,000 children.
PILOT AND SCALING GOALS
Post-Harvest Loans Pilot:
Distributed PHLs to 1,000 smallholder farmers in Nigeria
Generated an additional $25,000 in post-harvest income for farmers
Malnutrition Scaling Goals:
Test 3-4 candidate innovations in annual portfolios
Push at least 1 innovation to scale to reach 20% of treated children by Year 5
Reduce the cost-per-life saved of malnutrition treatment by 10% by Year 5
FOUNDING TEAM
Justin Graham - Co-founder
Abubakar Umar - Co-founder
Muhammad Uba - Co-founder
Parth Ahya - Co-founder
Justin Graham is Taimaka’s Executive Director and an Oxford graduate with a background in evidence-based development and quantitative economics. Abubakar Umar is Taimaka’s Medical Director and a former pediatrician with the Nigerian government. Muhammad Uba and Parth Ahya now serve on the board.