Timor-Leste – The Asosiasaun Nasional Produtor Fini Komersial (ANAPROFIKO) is a young organisation with a big job. It was established in 2015, as part of the Timor Leste Seeds of Life project, to act as the conduit between the government and the community seed producers. However, when the Seeds of Life project ended in mid-2016, ANAPROFIKO found itself struggling to work out what its purpose was and with no finance and procurement policy in place, it was struggling to function effectively.
Upon joining the Pacific Island Farmers Organisation Network and the MTCP2 Programme in late 2016, it immediately found itself in the situation of not qualifying for its full release of funds because of the lack of financial systems. A first step was obviously to get these systems in place, so the Pacific Island Farmers Organisation Network organized a one-to-one technical exchange with their Finance Manager, Aneet Kumar.
Similar in concept to the farmer-to-farmer learning exchanges, this could be termed a finance-to-finance learning exchange that saw Aneet travel to Timor Leste and work with the ANAPROFIKO secretariat to develop their finance policies and templates. With their systems now in place, further funding could be released and it did not take long before ANAPROFIKO was receiving, managing and acquitting their full funding allotment.
With their internal systems now working well and some funding to do their work, ANAPROFIKO has been able to focus on delivering services to its members. As a result of this, it has seen a remarkable 25% increase in total members over the past two years. Many of the new members have been women and their member gender ratio has shifted from 85:15 men to women in 2015-16, to a 65:35 ratio in 2017-18.
Of course, it has not stopped there. ANAPROFIKO has gone on to manage the funds for many other projects and is also working with the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations to utilise the existing Timor Leste seeds network to help implement a sustainable agriculture project. Not only has ANAPROFIKO found its way financially, but it has also worked out how to keep on serving its members once the original project ends. #
About MTCP2
The Medium-Term Cooperation Program Phase 2 (MTCP2), a five-year capacity building program supported by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), and the European Union (EU), has been implemented in 19 countries across three sub-regions—Southeast Asia, South Asia, and the Pacific—engaging 1,544 sub-national farmers organizations (FOs) with a total membership of around 22 million farmers. The funding support (total budget of $ 5 million for the whole duration of the project across 19 countries) serves as a catalytic fund that will allow FOs to enhance their capacity to be effective channels of economic services to farmers. The program has contributed to the formation of the strong national platform of FOs with improved capacity to engage in policy processes and mobilize resources from mainstream agricultural development programs like extension services, credit, and pre and post-harvest facilities. The program also helped in transforming farmers’ associations into commodity-based cooperatives to strengthen the role of small-scale farmers within an inclusive and sustainable value-chain. The program is being implemented by the consortium Asian Farmers’ Association for Sustainable Rural Development (AFA) and La Via Campesina (LVC).
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