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In May 2013, Agriculture for Impact and the Overseas Development Institute launched two Leaping and Learning reports.  The second, ‘8 Views for the G8: Buisiness Solutions for African Smallholder Farmers’ . A collection of 12 case studies, the paper brings together the experiences of eight development NGOs of building market linkages and finding business solutions to food and nutrition insecurity.

Finding business solutions to tackle hunger and under nutrition in sub-Saharan Africa continues to sit at the top of the global political agenda. We have seen first hand the power that providing enterprise skills and market access can have in empowering smallholder farmers to boost their production, improve their nutrition and increase their incomes – when managed effectively and coupled with appropriate safety nets.

This briefing paper is designed to complement another report entitled Leaping and Learning: Linking Smallholders to Markets in Africa, commissioned by Agriculture for Impact and researched by the Overseas Development Institute. Here, we aim to capture the views of eight leading agricultural development organisations, which are on the ground linking smallholder African farmers to markets every day. They share their organisations’ perspectives on the role of enterprise in future food security and nutrition, their experiences, and lastly their recommendations to G8 leaders for how to embed enterprise development and solutions more effectively into the post-2015 agenda.