Agriculture remains the backbone of many developing economies. In Africa, for example, farming provides roughly 60% of employment and often contributes the largest share of GDP. Yet much of this sector’s value is still locked in raw commodities. Transforming crops into higher-value products can dramatically raise farm incomes and national export earnings. In Nigeria, the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) has helped modernize cassava mills and train young engineers to maintain equipment. The IITA youth agripreneurs program now runs processing facilities that “produce new value-added products from cassava”, turning root crops into gari, flour, and starch. These efforts have boosted productivity and quality, enabling Nigerian farmers to reach larger domestic and export markets. Likewise, in East Africa, Uganda’s innovators are extracting fiber from banana stems, a waste byproduct of the country’s vast banana plantations, to weave rugs, mats, and even natural textiles, creating jobs for rural women and youth.

Small farmers and small processors lose a large share of potential income because of familiar, fixable problems: poor roads and transport, lack of storage, information gaps, weak bargaining power, and costly buyer requirements. Breaking Barriers pulls together proven, on-the-ground examples and practical steps that real producer groups and companies have used to change that — from Ghana’s cooperatives that co-own brands, to India’s village kiosks, Kenya’s aggregation networks, solar cold rooms in Nigeria, and franchise-style agribusiness and insurance models in Africa and Latin America.