In 2014, the Boris and Ināra Teterev Foundation began a three-year collaboration project with the organisation Global Fairness Initiative [2], which in partnership with the UN Development Programme and the National Agricultural Producers’ Association is implementing a programme in the Republic of Guinea-Bissau in the region of Bafatá and Gabú, as well as in the district of Suzana.

Guinea-Bissau [3] is a state in West Africa (a former Portuguese colony, which gained its independence in 1973). By way of comparison, its total area amounts to 55% of the territory of Latvia and it has a population of 1.7 million inhabitants. Currently, the gross national income per capita of this African state amounts to just 6% of the equivalent figure in Latvia and its agricultural communities are the poorest. The representatives of these communities are unable to fully utilise their social and political rights. Living in extremely limiting conditions, they cannot gain access to government services and are unable to maintain a good quality of life.

The goal of the programme is to make crop cultivation more effective on rice, Indian nut and onion growers’ farms, as well as to reduce market barriers for small farmers, giving the poorest farms the opportunity to develop production and helping them to establish sales structures for the products they produce. This will allow these farms to better utilise the opportunities offered by the market and to increase their incomes, thus aiding their subsistence.

This programme will improve the return on investment of 3,000 farms, which will improve their productivity and the quality of products they produce, providing them with technical assistance and introducing financial mechanisms that support investments in production with added value. Programme activities will include: training, formation of production and processing sites, provision of support in building partnerships with financial institutions, and partnership building to support the production sector at national level.

In the first project, during the 2014 operating year, despite significant political changes the formation of state governance structures, several activities were carried out under the auspices of the programme including the purification of paddy fields contaminated with salt water, training for small farmers in farm diversification and in ways and means of increasing their harvest and improving their watering systems. A close partnership has evolved with the federation of rural women’s organisations APALCOF [4].