Insights
What we are seeing in the field, and in the funding.
Two kinds of publishing. Written analysis for the people who commission and finance agricultural programmes, and documentary film for the farmers those programmes are meant to reach.
Smallholder Farmers
The documentary channel that opens the books.
"We tell the stories of East Africa's most surprising farmers, and we open their books."
Watch on YouTube
Smallholder Farmers is HAGRO's documentary channel, produced by AOG Media. Each episode profiles a named farmer in a named county and publishes what the enterprise actually earns and costs, with the farmer's consent.
It began as a way of documenting our own supplier network. It has become something more useful: an independent, public, growing body of real farm financial data in a region where almost all such data is modelled, aggregated or paywalled.
New episodes publish twice a week. The audience is largely working age East Africans and the diaspora, which is exactly the constituency that programmes struggle to reach and that our clients most want to influence.
What comes next
Expanding to film across the nine countries of Eastern Africa
Filming so far has been Kenyan. The method travels without changing: a named farmer, a named place, the books opened with consent. Production moves into the rest of the region soon.
- Kenya
- Uganda
- Tanzania
- Rwanda
- Burundi
- South Sudan
- Somalia
- Democratic Republic of the Congo
- Ethiopia
Written analysis
Notes for people who fund and commission this work
Short, sourced pieces on where agricultural programme money is actually moving in East Africa, and what it means for the organisations delivering on the ground.
Where East African agriculture money moved in 2026
The contraction of United States assistance, the shift of gravity toward multilateral and government borrowed finance, and what it changed for local delivery organisations.
30 August 2026
Briefing noteHow money reaches a firm from a multilateral agriculture loan
Why the project management unit, not the funder, is the client, and what that means for how a local firm should organise itself to win work.
30 August 2026
Briefing noteWhat it actually costs to serve a smallholder
Published service delivery economics from across East Africa, and why most programme budgets understate the last mile.
30 August 2026
Stay in touch
Occasional notes, no noise
A short email when we publish something worth your time. Typically once a month, sometimes less.