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Mamadou uses the mechanical applicator to easily apply targeted fertilizer in his father's rice field in Mali.
Map of Mali

Feed the Future works in the Sikasso, Mopti and Timbuktu regions.

Value Chains

  • Horticulture
  • Livestock
  • Maize/corn
  • Millet
  • Oilseed
  • Rice
  • Sorghum
See more regional stats
  • 20 million

    Population of Mali (World Bank, 2020)

  • 5%

    Annual GDP growth; agriculture accounts for 37.3 percent of added value (World Bank, 2019)

  • 57%

    Percentage of population living in rural Mali (World Bank, 2019)

  • 26.9%

    Percentage of stunted children under the age of 5 (2018, DHS)

  • 42%

    Estimated percentage of people living in poverty in Mali (World Bank, 2019)

Our Strategy

Strategy

Improve targeted value chains

Strategy

Address high levels of malnutrition and low dietary diversity

Strategy

Improve the enabling environment for agricultural trade and investment

Strategy

Strengthen capacity among farmers, the private sector, civil society and public institutions

Strategy

Strengthen household resilience to shocks

Our Progress

  • $11M

    Annual agricultural sales generated by Malian farms and firms reached by Feed the Future in FY20

  • 2.3M

    Children under 5 reached with nutrition help in FY20

  • 145,000

    Hectares tended with improved technologies or management practices with Feed the Future’s help in FY20

  • $934,000

    New private investment leveraged by Feed the Future in FY20

  • 105,000

    Producers using new technologies and practices with Feed the Future’s help in FY20

Our Work

Feed the Future’s efforts in Mali focus on proactive risk reduction and management to help families recover quickly from climate-related or economic shocks. They are inclusive of all social and political groups, including women and girls, youth, and people with disabilities and other marginalized groups. Feed the Future integrates agriculture and nutrition investments to enhance cognitive and physical development, increase economic productivity, strengthen resilience and advance global development.  For more information, please view the Nutrition Priority Countries.

Building Up the Private Sector

Feed the Future partners with the private sector to promote sustainable practices and address systemic barriers that impede private sector growth.

Through these partnerships, private companies commit to sustainably improving the production and sale of agricultural products by unlocking access to financing, services, inputs and knowledge for producers in exchange for access to their products. In 2020, Feed the Future’s private sector engagement efforts leveraged over $1.1 million in private sector funds to help boost efforts in agricultural production and nutrition.

Feed the Future also facilitates public-private partnerships. For example, the World Agroforestry Center connected Malian producer groups comprising 25,000 women with Olvea, a private French company based in Burkina Faso. As a result, producer groups made over $2.4 million in total sales of shea nuts in 2019.

Strengthening Resilience Through Agriculture-Led Growth and Nutrition

Many rural families depend on agriculture for a living, so Feed the Future helps them increase their production through access to improved seeds, finance, and soil and water conservation techniques. By investing in the rice, millet, sorghum and livestock sectors, as well as vegetable and agroforestry crops, Feed the Future is improving economic opportunity, resilience and nutrition. As a result, in 2020:

  • Over 76,000 Malian producers applied improved technologies and practices on 145,000 hectares of land, generating $11.4 million in agricultural sales.
  • Livestock farmers reached by Feed the Future sold nearly 3,400 beef cattle for more than $2.7 million, earning a net profit of $69 per head, an increase of 155 percent over what they earned before Feed the Future’s efforts began in 2014.
  • Sheep owners, many of whom are women, sold a total of more than 54,000 sheep for more than $880,000, improving their net profits.

Investing in Education, Governance and Health

For those with limited access to land and labor, access to options for employment and income off the farm and in other sectors are essential for survival. Feed the Future’s investments in education, governance and health are there to help.

  • Feed the Future, CARE, the World Vegetable Center and the World Agroforestry Center trained women and men on how to produce high-value, nutrient-dense vegetables and nutritious tree-based products, while also educating them on better nutrition and hygiene.
  • Feed the Future sensitization sessions reached nearly 16,000 women in child health and nutrition and conducted nutrition-related social and behavior change activities, reaching over 600,000 children under 5 with community-based nutrition support in 2020.
Source

These results reflect information from the U.S. Agency for International Development, U.S. Department of Agriculture and U.S. African Development Foundation, reported into Feed the Future’s central monitoring system for fiscal year 2020 (FY20). For more information on the indicators above, please view the Feed the Future Indicator Handbook. All dollar amounts are listed in U.S. dollars.

Our Activities

Feed the Future supports the following programs, partnerships and organizations in Mali

View all activities
  • Africa RISING's Large-scale diffusion of technologies for sorghum and millet systems
  • BHEARD - Mali: Borlaug Higher Education for Agricultural Research and Development - Mali
  • Finance Technical Assistance (TA) for DCA - VEGA/IESC
  • Food For Peace - Care Harande DFAP
  • Food Security Policy Innovation labs (MSU)
  • Livestock Technology Scaling Program (FTF-MLTS) (ILRI)
  • Scaling-up Climate-Smart Agroforestry Technologies (SmAT-Scaling) - ICRAF
  • Living Standard Measurement Study-Integrated Surveys on Agriculture (LSMS-ISA)
  • Global Health Support Initiative III
  • Northern Service Delivery
  • MOMENTUM Health Resilience
  • Private-Public Sector Family Planning
  • Rural Water Supply
  • Mali Justice Project (MJP)
  • Health Systems Strengthening
  • Mali Climate Change Adaptation Activity - (MCCAA)
  • Protecting Malian Farmers: Monitoring and Rapid Response to the Threat of Fall Armyworm

Related Resources

October 10, 2018

Feed the Future Country Plan for Mali

View PDF

December 1, 2011

Mali Feed the Future FY2010 Implementation Plan

View PDF

Featured Story From Mali

Doing Things Differently in Djalé

I gave the land to establish the community garden because our wives were motivated to produce vegetables for their families, especially to improve the diets of our children. In the past, we had many malnourished children in our village. Nowadays our kids are healthy.

Kadary Dembélé, Djalé village leader in the Sikasso region of Mali

View all stories from Mali

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