KOMAZA’s unique microforestry program targets the hardest-to-serve families living in remote drylands in rural Africa. KOMAZA provides farmers with farm inputs, tools, and hands-on training to grow woodlots on their unused land. Once mature, KOMAZA sells the trees grown by these farmers as high-value wood products to generate life-changing income for their families and to create a sustainable wood supply to abate deforestation. By addressing poverty alleviation through market-based solutions, KOMAZA eases pressure on indigenous forests, restores degraded landscapes, and helps Africa’s farmers make life-long investments in their families’ futures. KOMAZA also provides employment for the local community, offering steady wages, technical training, and professional development opportunities for their employees, most of whom have never had any formal employment.

In just the first 4 years of putting microforestry in action, KOMAZA had planted almost 700,000 trees with nearly 3,000 farmers in arid and semi-arid lands in Ganze, Kenya. After their first harvest, they returned $208 on average to each farmer, which is the equivalent of 4 months’ worth of wages. 67% of farmers planned to use the extra income on school fees for their children while others planned to use the money to improve current livelihoods, invest in new enterprises, and improve living conditions by installing running water or electricity in their homes. KOMAZA continues to create sustainable economic opportunities through microforestry to help lift rural farmers out of poverty. As of 2018, KOMAZA has planted 2,000 hectares of trees, working with approximately 6,000 farmers.

KOMAZA exemplifies a successful, innovative social enterprise and serves as a model to other organizations aiming to produce scalable, sustainable solutions to global problems. KOMAZA’s microforestry initiative is a unique combination of microfinance, sustainable forestry, and conservation. This microforestry model aligns farmer supply with market demand. In this model, one of KOMAZA’s key drivers of success is their field extension network, which unites both the innovative tech solutions used to interact with masses in the developing world and the traditional, face-to-face communication necessary in rural areas. KOMAZA continues to invest resources in finding a workable, scalable solution and to develop an information management platform that suits the needs of the organization and their beneficiaries and can be replicated in the wider development industry.

KOMAZA offers an internationally scalable, market-based solution to poverty and deforestation. Microforestry is a model that has the intrinsic potential to get millions of families out of poverty. With investment for initial growth, KOMAZA will become financially self-sustaining and self-scaling in the future. All their operations, support systems, and infrastructure have been designed from the beginning to be easily replicated in new locations and self-sustaining at scale, requiring minimal oversight from high-level staff. The core of their business is a low-cost field extension network hired from the communities in which they work. KOMAZA also works directly with community leaders, chiefs, elders, division officers, etc. to gain their support early on, especially as they expand to new locations. KOMAZA partners with major government entities, such as Kenya Forestry Service, Kenya Forestry Research Institute and Kenya Agricultural Research Institute for technical and regulatory advice. Building awareness and reputation is key to gaining acceptance for super-scaling.