Since SCOPEinsight was founded in 2010, they have pioneered in developing innovative, universally-applicable assessment tools that measure the level of farmer professionalism in emerging markets. SCOPEinsight believes farmer professionalism is the key to structural transformation of the agricultural sector, and by providing business intelligence they aim to increase transparency in the agricultural market, lower investment risks, and increase business opportunities for stakeholders in and around the agricultural value chain.

In 2014 SCOPEinsight established a long-term partnership with the International Finance Corporation (IFC) and Cargill, in order to assess and improve the business skills of 300 cocoa cooperative leaders in Côte d’Ivoire. Cargill needed to address two common challenges for cocoa cooperatives: cooperative governance and access to finance. A key issue was the lack of asset finance available to invest in trucks to bring cocoa beans more efficiently and rapidly to market.

The partnership of SCOPEinsight, IFC, and Cargill resulted in upgraded assessment tools that were used to assess the capacity level of 80 cocoa cooperatives. After these assessments a majority of the involved cooperatives obtained a commercial mid-term loan provided by Ivorian Bank SIB and backed by Cargill at significantly lower interest rates than currently available.  78 new trucks for cocoa bean transportation were leased already in the first year, and the cocoa cooperatives continue to reap the harvest of this fruitful program.

To bring this success one step further, in September of this year SCOPEinsight and IFC signed an agreement to promote global professionalism in agribusiness. With this partnership IFC and SCOPEinsight aim to (1) improve the existing tools continuously to make them even more user-friendly, cost-efficient and scaleable, (2) develop new tools and customize existing tools to respond to market and clients’ needs, and (3) develop an infrastructure to scale up through the launch of an assessor network, and position the tool as the standard in the agribusiness sector.

The collaboration with IFC has also been instrumental in the setup and launch of the Agribusiness Market Ecosystems Alliance (AMEA). Initiated by SCOPEinsight and co-founded with IFC, ICCO, VECO, NCBA CLUSA, ACDI VOCA, IDH and Argidius, AMEA is a global multi-stakeholder platform which aims to provide a standardized and quality-controlled approach to professionalizing farmers. IFC is the chair of the board of AMEA.

To read more about SCOPEinsight, visit www.scopeinsight.com.