Article

What Do Businesses Gain When They Invest in Women in Their Supply Chains?

2026-10-26 · By Cait Nordehn, Senior Manager of the Global Practice for Women & Youth, TechnoServe, and Ana Herrera, Director, Inclusive Investment, TechnoServe

Cait Nordehn and Ana Herrera of TechnoServe explore what businesses gain when they invest in women across agricultural supply chains. Drawing on evidence from Tanzania and Zimbabwe, they show how more inclusive training, sourcing and supplier support can improve productivity, strengthen supply reliability and create shared value for women farmers and agribusinesses.

The case for investing in women is often framed through its benefits for families and communities. Those benefits matter, and they appeal not only to development professionals, but also to business owners.

To sustain such investments, however, businesses will also ask what it means for supply, quality, sales, and costs. This is especially important if we want companies to maintain and expand practices that provide equitable opportunities for women after donor-funded support ends.

The International Year of the Woman Farmer will bring overdue attention to women in agriculture. Yet recognition will not be enough to change where businesses invest. What many businesses still overlook is that improving women’s access to training, finance, technology, and markets can also increase productivity, strengthen supply chains, and improve their bottom line.

Investing in women can create better economic opportunities for them and stronger businesses. The key to unlocking those investments is proving where that shared value comes from.

Start with a Business Priority

The FCDO-funded Commercial Agriculture for Smallholders and Agribusiness Technical Assistance Facility (CASA TAF), implemented by TechnoServe, works with agribusinesses, development finance institutions and impact investors to improve company performance while expanding opportunities for smallholder farmers.

Co-creation with agribusinesses is central to this work. Companies help identify the commercial problem, test what is practical within their operations, and shape solutions they can sustain. Drawing on this experience, CASA TAF studied the commercial value of practices designed to increase women’s participation. It asked five practical questions:

• What problem does the company need to solve?
• What role do women already play?
• What prevents them from contributing or benefiting more?
• What would the company need to change, and what would it cost?
• Would the result increase revenue or reduce costs?

Recognizing Women’s Contribution to Business Outcomes

Cotacof, one of Tanzania’s largest coffee buyers and exporters, grows by buying more and better coffee through long-term relationships with the farmer cooperatives that supply it. Training sits at the center of that strategy. There was one hitch: not everyone doing the work was in the room.

An inclusive business planning process with TechnoServe helped Cotacof explore opportunities to strengthen its relationships with farmer cooperatives and secure more, better-quality coffee. Women owned close to 20% of farms in the company’s sample and represented an important part of the workforce on farms registered to men. Yet they accounted for only 10% of recorded deliveries. On paper, they were barely suppliers. On the farm, they were integral to production.

Cotacof asked women what kept them from attending training. Based on their feedback, it changed meeting times and locations and encouraged women to take part in demonstration plots and join a coffee-tree renewal program.

Instead of creating a separate program for women, Cotacof worked to make its existing technical assistance and farmer support more accessible to them. Feedback sessions, attendance incentives, and expert support raised overall training and support expenditure by 13.35%.

Drawing on evaluation data and evidence from the literature, the study then modeled a scenario in which training women contributed to a 30% yield increase in participating households. Applied to Cotacof’s 2025 purchases, this could produce another 559 metric tons of green coffee, worth about $3.5 million to farmers. At an assumed exporter margin of 1%, Cotacof could earn more than five times the added cost.

These figures are projections and rest on assumptions that farm-level data has yet to confirm. But they capture the wider opportunity: removing barriers for women can improve the return on existing investments, while helping women become more productive and visible suppliers.

Sometimes the Business Case Is Already Hiding in the Data

Organic Africa trains and buys herbs, spices, and medicinal plants from smallholders in Zimbabwe, linking them to high-value local and global markets. TechnoServe worked with them in strengthening their rosella supply chain where women represented about 60% of farmers but approximately 80% of those who sold to the company. They supplied more than 75% of all rosella bags.

Registered women were also more likely to become active suppliers than men: 60% delivered a product, compared with 49% of registered men. Meanwhile, rosella volumes rose by more than 50% between 2023 and 2025.

Organic Africa does not maintain a separate women’s program. Women are already central to its sourcing model, making a stand-alone return difficult to calculate.

The data nevertheless revealed something any buyer would care about: investments in registering and supporting women were particularly likely to result in products being delivered.

Proving the Return Can Unlock More Investment

Companies found value in different places: reliable and sustainable coffee supply for Cotacof and a dependable supplier base for Organic Africa. Their experiences offer three lessons.

First, make women visible in the data. Businesses should collect sex-disaggregated figures and connect women’s participation with operational results such as yield, quality, delivery rates, and supplier retention.

Second, co-create solutions around a problem the business already wants to solve. The case for investing in women became relevant because women could help address specific commercial needs. There is no universal return: the opportunity depends on the company, its business model, and women’s role in the value chain.

Third, agree on what to measure and build the evidence over time. A full financial return may take several seasons to appear. Early signs can still show whether women attend training, adopt recommended practices, or deliver more consistently. Those indicators can later be connected to revenue and costs. Companies should also separate the added cost of reaching women from expenses they would incur anyway. In several cases, inclusion required more deliberate design rather than a large new budget.

Turn Recognition into Investment

The International Year of the Woman Farmer should change more than how women are described. It should change how businesses see their markets and supply chains.

Women’s economic empowerment and business performance can go hand in hand, but that outcome requires deliberate choices. Businesses can begin with one overlooked group, one commercial constraint, and one practice worth changing.

Investing in women is good business. Proving the return is how we turn that insight into action.