About Village Enterprise

We envision an African continent forever free of extreme poverty.

Since 1987, we’ve been working to end extreme poverty in rural Africa through the power of entrepreneurship. Community-based and locally-led, our poverty graduation program equips the most vulnerable women, refugees, and youth with the skills and resources to start climate-smart businesses and savings groups, ultimately breaking the cycle of extreme poverty. Our program not only builds self-reliance and financial inclusion, but it also strengthens gender equity, improves physical and mental well-being, promotes conservation efforts, cultivates resilience to climate change and other global shocks, and ensures a brighter future for generations to come.

Who we are

With over 35 years of experience working in rural Africa, the Village Enterprise team is guided by our core values of ubuntu, passion, integrity, innovation, and sustainability. Our cutting-edge organization is driven by data, consistent and rigorous evaluation of our programs, and a commitment to improving our program through human-centered design and lean impact approaches. By keeping innovation and collective action at the core of who we are, we want to ensure we have the best practices in place and partner with the right governments, funders, agencies, and nonprofits to forever end extreme poverty in rural Africa.

Learn more about our team

Where we are going

We’re on a mission to end extreme poverty for 20 million women, men, and children by 2030. Guided by our rolling three-year strategic plan, we will continue to scale our work in our countries of operation over the coming years, as well as expand into new countries across Africa through partnerships with leading international and local nonprofits and NGOs, governments, and private sector companies.