She’ll Foundation, in a move to tackle income inequality and unlock the economic potential of women in agriculture, has partnered with Startup Discovery School to launch the West Africa Aggregator Service Platform (WAASP), a pilot initiative designed to boost income growth for women smallholder farmers in Ghana and Senegal.
The one-year programme aims to test innovative delivery models for climate-smart agricultural solutions, addressing long-standing barriers that prevent women farmers from accessing and benefiting from modern technologies.
By focusing on affordability, risk-sharing and scalability, the initiative targets at least a 20 per cent increase in farmers’ incomes while laying the groundwork to reach 200,000 farmers, half of them women, by 2030.
As Jonathan Berman, CEO of Shell Foundation, explained, “WAASP is testing whether coordinated, service delivery can scale climate-smart agriculture with women at the center.”
What to Know About the Project
WAASP is structured as a one-year pilot programme designed not just to introduce agricultural technologies, but to fundamentally rethink how they are delivered to underserved farmers.
Backed by major public and philanthropic partners, including support from the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO), the initiative brings together funding, innovation expertise and on-the-ground networks to test scalable solutions.
At its core, the programme is exploring whether existing climate-smart technologies, already proven in other contexts, can create real, measurable change when paired with more practical delivery systems.
Rather than operating as isolated pilot projects, WAASP is built to identify sustainable models that can be expanded across the region.
What Problem Are They Trying to Solve?
Despite the availability of effective agricultural technologies, many women smallholder farmers remain excluded due to structural and financial barriers. These include high upfront costs, irregular income flows, and heightened exposure to farming risks such as crop failure or post-harvest losses.
Startup Discovery School CEO Mandy Nyarko highlighted this disconnect, noting that “many proven technologies fail to reach women farmers because delivery models are misaligned with their cashflow and risk profile.”
In essence, the issue is not a lack of innovation, but a mismatch between how solutions are offered and the economic realities of the farmers who need them most.
WAASP seeks to close this gap by redesigning access, ensuring that technologies are not only available, but also usable and financially viable for women farmers.
Innovative Delivery Models at the Core
A defining feature of WAASP is its focus on testing alternative delivery systems that reduce financial pressure on farmers. These include service-based models, shared access systems, and layaway-style payment plans that allow farmers to pay gradually instead of bearing heavy upfront costs.
By distributing risk and aligning payments with farmers’ income cycles, these models aim to make agricultural innovations more accessible.
This shift represents a move away from traditional ownership models toward more flexible, service-oriented approaches that better reflect the realities of smallholder farming.
Testing Through Established Farmer Networks
To ensure real-world impact, WAASP is being implemented through three established agricultural networks, myAgro in Senegal, and Vitara and Complete Farmer in Ghana. Collectively, these organisations serve more than 500,000 smallholder farmers across key agricultural value chains with strong participation from women.
The programme will run structured six-month validation cycles, during which each delivery model and solution will be rigorously assessed.
Metrics such as adoption rates, continued usage, and income improvement will determine whether a model is viable. Solutions that fail to deliver results will either be refined or discontinued, ensuring that only effective approaches are scaled.
Climate-Smart Technologies in Focus
WAASP’s initial cohort of solution providers reflects a strong emphasis on climate resilience and efficiency. These include solar-powered drying systems, cold storage facilities to reduce post-harvest losses, and irrigation technologies designed to improve productivity in water-scarce conditions.
Additional solutions, such as low-cost fertiliser options and climate-smart poultry systems, have been carefully selected to align with women farmers’ financial realities.
The goal is not just to introduce innovation, but to ensure it fits seamlessly into existing livelihoods while delivering tangible economic benefits.
A Data-Driven Approach to Scaling Impact
Unlike many development initiatives, WAASP is built around disciplined testing and measurable outcomes. Each solution will be evaluated against common performance indicators, including adoption, retention and income impact.
Nyarko emphasised the importance of this structured approach, stating that the programme will “coordinate disciplined validation across networks and identify models that can scale sustainably.”
Findings from the pilot, including data on adoption rates, income changes and delivery economics, will be published to guide future expansion across West Africa.
Why This Matters
The significance of WAASP extends beyond the immediate beneficiaries. By focusing on women smallholder farmers, who make up a substantial portion of Africa’s agricultural workforce, the initiative addresses a critical leverage point for economic growth, food security and climate resilience.
If successful, the programme could redefine how agricultural innovations are delivered across developing markets, proving that the right combination of technology and delivery models can unlock large-scale impact. It also offers a replicable framework for aligning innovation with the lived realities of underserved communities.
Ultimately, WAASP is not just about improving farming, it is about building a more inclusive agricultural economy where women have the tools, support and opportunities to thrive.
Talking Points
The WAASP initiative by Shell Foundation and Startup Discovery School represents a thoughtful shift from the typical “technology-first” development model to a more practical “delivery-first” approach, which is arguably where many past interventions have failed.
Its emphasis on aligning financing and access models with the cashflow realities of women farmers is particularly strong, as it acknowledges that affordability, not availability, is often the real barrier.
However, while the structured validation cycles and performance-based elimination of weak models suggest discipline and accountability, the one-year pilot timeframe may be too short to fully capture long-term income impacts or behavioral adoption patterns in agriculture, which are often seasonal and context-dependent.
Additionally, the reliance on existing networks in Ghana and Senegal provides scale and efficiency, but may also limit insights into more marginal or harder-to-reach farmers who fall outside these ecosystems.
There is also a broader question of sustainability beyond donor-backed funding, particularly whether service-based models can remain commercially viable without continued subsidies.
Nonetheless, the initiative’s data-driven approach and clear focus on measurable income gains position it as a potentially impactful experiment, one that could offer valuable lessons for scaling inclusive, climate-smart agriculture across Africa if its findings are transparently shared and rigorously applied.
Bookmark Techparley.com for the most insightful technology news from the African continent.
Follow us on X/Twitter @Techparleynews, on Facebook at Techparley Africa, on LinkedIn at Techparley Africa, or on Instagram at Techparleynews
