Toolbox

BDS tools are hardly ever assessed for cost-effectiveness and many are not used beyond the life of a project or two. This is a costly reinvention of the wheel. Therefore, AMEA strives to curate a Toolbox, composed of members and partners approaches. We do so by supporting a peer review process, which assesses effectiveness and potential for scaling. To date, these best-in-class approaches have reached over 2.5 million farmers.

We call on all people involved in inclusive agribusiness projects to use tools that have a track record and to invest in their development. AMEA members can access these tools and have the opportunity to:

 

  • Standardize your capacity building approach, benchmark the farmer organizations you work with, and generate insights into how to improve performance.
  • Contribute to AMEA’s investment in learning and improvement processes, such as deep dive case studies, communities of practice, and the Tool Improvement Facility (TIF). This will also enable your organization to remain competitive.
  • Access high quality assessors, trainers and coaches, who are familiar with the AMEA Toolbox materials and…
  • Stop wasting money reinventing the wheel!

 

The Toolbox is peer reviewed every two years. Currently, these are the approved training and coaching materials, as well as the assessment tools:

  • approved Training materials

    Agribusiness Leadership Program (ALP)
    ALP Bookkeeping Essentials
    Last Mile Retailer
    Agri Business Coaching (ABC)
    LINK Methodology

  • APPROVED Assesment Tools

    M4
    SCOPE Basic
    SCOPE Pro
    SCOPE Input Retailer

You can find more information about the Toolbox as well as the peer review process and criteria in the documents below:

INTRO TO THE TOOLBOX
EXTENDED TOOLBOX GUIDE

OTHER TOOLS supported by amea

AMEA also scans regularly to consider tools that could be complementary to the Toolbox. AMEA also invests in the improvement of these tools as explained in this Report. The tools listed below are therefore open to members for testing. 

 

As these are newly developed tools and have not been tried and tested in various contexts and countries yet, AMEA has not peer reviewed them. As such, they might only join the AMEA Toolbox in the next peer review process, in 2024.

Pilot assessment tools to enable rural Savings and Credit Cooperative Organisations (SACCOs) to monitor and assess their performance and capacities.

SCOPE Rapid is a quick way to get basic information about agribusiness. Because it provides a glimpse, the data can be collected in one and a half hours. In addition, the data is collected by data collectors, who do not need to become certified assessors.

The Diagnostic and Monitoring of Organizations’ Capacity (DMOC) toolkit was developed to conduct various types of organizational capacity evaluations/assessments and, based on each organization’s evaluation, develop an action plan, which can be monitored by the organization itself and capacity strengthening advisor or coach.

The Women’s Inclusion, Empowerment and Leadership in Cooperatives (WIELCOOP) is a collection of tools that can be selectively used by trainers to better integrate gender and address women’s empowerment in cooperatives and producer organizations. This is a blended learning approach using handouts, digital presentations and videos. Available in French, Spanish, and Swahili.

A food safety costing tool to help farmer organisations meet international market standards for food safety, sanitation and hygiene practices. Available in Spanish, English, and French. The tool was developed based on the White Paper developed by Corus International to enable a common understanding of the food safety challenge facing Farmer Organizations.