This study examines the social enterprise One Acre Fund (OAF) in Kenya, which is funded by the Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau (KfW). Here, beyond the evaluation of social impact, the social enterprise is also understood and analysed as a development policy actor. As part of a field study, intensive interviews, focus group discussions (FGDs) and a household (HH) survey were conducted with farmers and OAF staff, supplemented by expert interviews. A special focus was placed on the farmers’ perceptions and assessments.

The OAF is a social enterprise registered under 501(c)(3) in the US as a non-profit, non-governmental organisation (NGO) that supports smallholder HH through a broadly holistic approach to agricultural development. The company began its activities in western Kenya in 2006, but has since been able to establish them in other parts of the country and, in the core programme, across national borders in Rwanda, Tanzania, Burundi, Malawi and Nigeria.

The holistic model of the OAF provides for a combination of different development policy interventions. It follows the basic idea that a combined provision of access to credit, inputs and training in agriculture achieves a higher impact than the isolated improvement of only one of the aspects mentioned. The credit is only given in kind for farm inputs or agricultural goods and consumer goods, in order to ensure that the credit is used productively as far as possible. The accompanying training ensures economic success.

The study shows that the holistic approach does have a positive effect on HH income and, in particular, increases the supply of staple food by increasing subsistence production. The OAF’s range of products is now diversified, but clients mainly ask for maize seed and fertilizer. The improved supply of staple food and the slightly increased incomes lead to a reduction in competing needs. Monetary income has to be spent less often on staple foods and, according to the farmers, is instead used mainly for school education and improved consumption in the sense of a more nutritious diet. This helps central development policy goals to be attained.

The model of the OAF in Kenya shows that social entrepreneurial approaches can achieve a very great reach. The decentralized and thus rapidly scalable business principle reached over 1,400,000 HH on the African continent in 2021, about 500,000 of them in Kenya. The OAF provides quality inputs and, through the credit model, gives rural HH much improved access to agricultural implements and other products to improve their livelihoods.

However, the entrepreneurial principle is a hurdle for deeper developmental interventions. Adapting agricultural practices in the sense of agro-ecological cultivation requires intensive advisory services. However, an increase in these training sessions inevitably leads to an increase in costs for a social enterprise. This therefore jeopardizes the economic viability according to which they are evaluated via corresponding indicators within the framework of funding by German development cooperation (DC), among other things. The simultaneous reduction of input-intensive farming systems reduces sales and is therefore contrary to the generic interests of a (social) enterprise. In the field of sustainable agriculture, social enterprises are accordingly only able to promote the spread of adapted farming methods up to a certain point.

With the OAF’s increasing presence as an agricultural input provider, it is taking a strong role in the Kenyan market, serving a large number of HH at the local level. This inevitably has an impact on existing market players, but also on the general development of the market. This effect is reinforced by the establishment of a network of OAF retail points, which removes the focus on small farms and allows OAF products to be purchased by farmers outside the core programme. Whether this effect is in the sense of sustainable economic development and whether the systemic effects of this strong presence of the OAF as a donor-supported social enterprise on the Kenyan market are to be assessed positively, must be examined for further promotion from a development policy perspective.