In Côte d’Ivoire, sustainability initiative Better Cotton is running a two-year pilot project to improve farmer healthcare and cotton supply chains.
This plan will create a health program for 8,000 local residents.
Nearly half of Côte d’Ivoire’s population lives in poverty, and its health indices are among the worst in West Africa.
Participation rates are low despite the Côte d’Ivoire government’s support for a comprehensive social protection policy and the 2019 Universal Health Coverage law, which mandates citizens to join.
Only 27% of the population has registered for the program as of 2024, and only 5% uses its health care services.
Better Cotton hopes to create a scalable approach for impoverished areas worldwide with this endeavour.
According to Better Cotton smallholder livelihoods manager Maria Kjaer, farmer health and well-being are crucial to sustainable agriculture. We can reduce healthcare barriers for farming communities to make a difference.”
The effort is funded by Better Cotton, ISEAL, and Olam Agri. Financial aid from the ISEAL Innovations Fund helps execute it. British aid and the Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO) support this fund.
Better Cotton worked with Olam Agri subsidiary SECO and social enterprise Elucid to create a health-improving, cost-effective ecosystem.
Select farming regions in Côte d’Ivoire will use Elucid’s digital healthcare platform.
This portal will register cotton growers and link them with local licensed healthcare providers while permitting secure payments and gathering user input to optimise service offerings, notes Better Cotton.
According to Elucid managing director and co-founder Samuel Knauss, this project will introduce our healthcare concept to cotton producers by boosting agricultural producer organisations. Farmer access to emergency treatment will be affordable. We want to demonstrate that investment in healthcare increases farmer well-being, strengthens cotton supply chains, and leaves a lasting influence on communities, building on our cocoa and coffee successes.”
The cooperation will involve agricultural producer organisations (APOs) to promote local participation with the platform, monitor its use, and address community issues.
Success is projected to increase farmer households’ social protection coverage, eliminate healthcare access hurdles, and enable sustained investment in these services when the initiative ends.
SECO vice president and managing director Jean-François Touré said: “This project shall serve as a reference for the industry, particularly as Côte d’Ivoire implements its Universal Health Coverage program. We hope this relationship with Better Cotton and Elucid will have a lasting, scalable impact on farming communities.”
Better Cotton’s initiative aims to provide insights into sustainable agriculture techniques and data on health outcomes and farmer incomes to drive similar efforts across commodities and locations.
