East and Central Africa

Solidaridad operates across East and Central Africa in agricultural, industry and mining supply chains. We work with farmers, producers, miners, the public and private sectors and development partners. Through a combination of boots-and-brains on the ground, interactive dialogue, community-based initiatives and public-private partnerships, we champion sustainable supply chains.

Where We Work

Solidaridad East and Central Africa has operates in Burundi, Cameroon, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Uganda. Across these countries, we support farmers, producer organizations, and miners in key commodities to achieve sustainable livelihoods and engage in sustainable supply chain activities.

Who we are

Solidaridad is an international civil society organization with over 50 years of experience in developing solutions to make communities more resilient — from our early roots supporting repressed communities in Latin America to our current work fostering more sustainable supply chains. We currently work in over 40 countries, on five continents, through eight independently supervised regional offices.

About us

Change that matters

International cooperation with people throughout the value chain is at the heart of our work, with a focus on small scale and family farmers, and workers on farms, in mines, and in supply chains and their communities.

Vision

We envision a world in which the economy works for all: where all we produce, and all we consume, can sustain us while respecting the planet, each other and the generations to come.

Mission

We enable farmers and workers to earn a living income, shape their own future, and produce in balance with nature by working throughout the whole supply chain to make sustainability the norm.

Our approach

International organization with boots and brains on the ground

We’re proud of our defining features: our global scope and local focus; our thirst for innovation and capacity to maintain what works well; and our many partnerships with people throughout the value chain – essential for fostering genuine sustainability.

Staff

The biggest differentiator for creating impact is our staff. In the past 10 years, Solidaridad has witnessed fast growth in staff worldwide. Currently, we employ almost 1000 mostly local staff – spread over eight regions. Their knowledge, expertise and experience is key to our success.

Structure

Solidaridad has purposefully chosen to adopt a network structure based on local management, supervision, knowledge and expertise across the globe. The premise of the structure is that it promotes capacity building: strengthening Solidaridad teams in the region, enabling them to take control of supervisory tasks and to manage programming themselves. The regional Solidaridad teams cooperate with their own partners on the planning, implementation, communication and evaluation of programmes, and on reporting their results.

The organization consists of eight regional centres throughout the world with a Network Secretariat connecting the regions. The network secretariat (officially Solidaridad Network Foundation, founded in 2011) is located in Utrecht, the Netherlands, in the same office building as Solidaridad Europe, one of the regional centres. The Network Secretariat consists of the Executive Director with a small staff surrounding him and delivering tasks that support the whole network.