Growing a Business, Empowering Women Farmers: Totahara’s Story in Burundi

For rural women farmers, a harvest is more than the result of a season’s hard work. It is an opportunity to earn an income, support a family and build a more secure future. Yet, without access to quality seeds, reliable markets and the skills to improve production, turning a harvest into lasting economic opportunity remains a challenge.

In the spirit of International Day of Rural Women, the Agri-Business Facility for Africa (ABF) highlights how it is supporting a woman-led enterprise in Burundi strengthen its supply chain while creating opportunities for rural women farmers to earn more.

At the centre of this success is Christella Ndayishimiye, founder of Totahara, a food processing company that transforms maize and other grains into nutritious porridge flour for children and mothers. As demand for her products grew, securing sufficient quantities of quality maize became increasingly difficult. Christella often travelled across the country to find reliable suppliers. Today, that is changing.

Connecting women farmer to markets
Through ABF’s Matching Grant Fund (MGF), Totahara and its consortium partner, IPREBAD, joined efforts to strengthen smallholder farmers’ production capacity, including that of Batwa women’s groups, and expand their market opportunities. Under this partnership, 450 farmers, including 287 women and 379 young people, gained knowledge in entrepreneurship, climate-smart agriculture and good agricultural practices (GAP). A further outcome was the connection of 900 farmers, including 600 women and 750 young people, to markets through offtake arrangements. Together, the farmers produced 102 tonnes of maize, which was sold through local markets, with some supplied to Totahara. For the farmers, this provides an opportunity to reach buyers and for Christella, it helps make sourcing quality maize more manageable

Madam Christella Ndayishimiye, founder of Totahara, and Dr. Bernard Abgo, Policy Advisor at ABF/GIZ, during a visit to Totahara’s production facility in Burundi

The MGF combines co-investment with tailored business development services to help agribusinesses strengthen financial management, improve governance and expand market access. This integrated approach enables enterprises to attract private investment, scale their operations and create lasting economic opportunities.

“We are very grateful to GIZ. The project supported the training of farmers to produce good-quality maize using quality seeds. We are now fortunate to have access to good-quality seeds harvested by well-trained farmers who collaborate with IPREBAD,” Christella says.

Turning harvests into income and jobs
The initiative is helping make this possible for the farmers to earn more. The average income of women farmers have increased from approximately €360 to €440, an additional €80 from maize sales.

The impact extend beyond the farms. Improved access to locally produced maize contributed to a 16% increase in Totahara’s turnover. The project further contributed to the creation of 19 jobs for women and young people, including 16 in processing and three in primary maize production.

Looking ahead: More production, more opportunities
Christella is now preparing Totahara for a new phase of growth. With support from the World Bank, the company is building a larger factory, with plans to increase production from one tonne to 10 tonnes per day.

“We currently produce one tonne per day, but with our new factory, we plan to increase production to 10 tonnes per day. This means we will need much more raw material, so connections with growers, associations and cooperatives will be very important to us,” Christella explains.

Beyond business growth, Christella hopes the expansion will help the company reach more people with its nutritious products and advance its mission to address malnutrition.

“These connections will also help us achieve our goal of fighting malnutrition by providing good-quality porridge to children experiencing malnutrition and pregnant women who need it to nourish their children,” she adds.

Building a more inclusive agricultural value chain
Totahara’s experience illustrates ABF’s wider commitment to strengthening agribusinesses and promoting inclusive growth. Across Africa, the project has reached more than 2 million smallholder farmers, supported over 3,000 cooperatives and strengthened 71,000 processors. Women account for 35%, 34% and 92% respectively. Also, more than 1,000 women and men have been trained to integrate gender equality into their businesses.

This International Day of Rural Women, the story demonstrates how investment in farmers’ skills and market connections can help women earn more, support growing businesses and build stronger agricultural value chains.

The Matching Grant Fund (MGF) is an initiative of Agri-Business Facility for Africa (ABF) as part of the Joint Action "Business Support Facility for Resilient Agricultural Value Chains", co-financed by the European Union under the Samoa agreement with OACPS and by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) and implemented by Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH.