Root Capital Ended a Kenyan Farmer Program That Participants Said They Valued
Root Capital discontinued a digital advisory program for macadamia farmers in Kenya after a trial found no significant knowledge gain, although farmers said they valued it. The service, run in Rwanda since 2019 and extended to Kenya in 2024, had more than 6,000 registered farmers there, yet only 6 percent recalled receiving materials and only 9 percent answered the final survey, according to Sasha Dichter and Kate Labeille.
The Kenyan extension started on solid evidence: repeated assessments in Rwanda had found that coffee farmers improved their knowledge and adoption of good practices. It died halfway when that success failed to transfer to Kenya, where the aggregator-to-farmer relationship was quite different. Perception surveys alone would have described a service farmers valued and recommended. The embedded randomized trial described something else, and that disagreement informed the decision to stop.
Source: Stanford Social Innovation Review · November 2, 2026