Rural Innovation and Farming is focused on identifying the key entrepreneurial and innovating leverages that will increase the overall livelihood and quality of life of small farmers and rural inhabitants (while sustaining food security). To achieve this vision: a) Ashoka Fellows in Sub-Saharan Africa and in India will have created successful models of entrepreneur-centered innovations that use agriculture and sustainable rural development as the basis for economic growth; and b) Significant innovations in agriculture will have been launched, grown and spread, and firmly established in Sub-Saharan Africa and India. Ashoka expects that the innovations we source will contribute to diminishing rural poverty and increase the quality of livelihoods of people in rural societies.
Objectives: a) Search for and select as Ashoka Fellows the most innovative social entrepreneurs working in agriculture and sustainable rural development in Sub-Saharan Africa and India. b) Improve the capacity of Ashoka Fellows working in agriculture and rural development and their initiatives to scale-up their impact and outreach, improve their cost-effectiveness and become sustainable. c) Spread the agricultural innovations and learning of the Ashoka community and lead a cross-sector effort to transform the field of agriculture and rural development over the next decade.

Identify key collaborators, innovators and others interested in Rural Innovation and Farming