This report maps over 200 organizations providing technical assistance to agri-SMEs across sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America and the Caribbean. Our scope focused on TA to mobilize finance for agri-SMEs, particularly missing-middle enterprises, whether donor funded or tied to investment vehicles. The analysis also provides an in-depth examination of 30 TA providers and facilitators specializing in climate and nature.
Figure 1. CLIC's data collection approach
Table 1. Database of organizations providing TA to agri-SMEs
This mapping supports decision-making for three audiences: funders, investors, and TA providers. Funders can identify where their current portfolios may be duplicative or overlooking underserved markets. Investors can find partnerships with TA providers in their target geographies to strengthen their pipeline. TA providers can identify complementary organizations and coordination opportunities based on the services they provide.
ECOSYSTEM INSIGHTS
TA providers concentrate heavily on a small number of hub markets. This ecosystem density enables provider coordination and easier SME navigation, but also risks neglect of frontier markets. In SSA, five countries are served by over 80 TA organizations: Kenya, Ghana, Uganda, Niger, and Rwanda. Kenya dominates SSA’s TA landscape with 104 organizations, 60% of the region’s total, including 14 headquartered regional players. In LAC, the TA organizations we analyzed clustered their operations in large EMDEs; Colombia and Peru were both served by 61, and Mexico by 50.
Across both SSA and LAC, least developed countries and small island developing states are the most underserved. In SSA, the LDCs, Guinea-Bissau and Eritrea, each have fewer than 20 organizations, while among SIDS, Cabo Verde has six. In LAC, countries with fewer than 10 organizations are predominantly SIDS such as the upper-middle-income nations Suriname, Saint Lucia, and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. This pattern suggests potential market failure where vulnerability is highest.
Local TA providers are difficult to map systematically and appear underrepresented despite their important role. This is despite interviewees emphasizing the effectiveness of partnering directly with local providers who deliver TA on the ground and maintain existing relationships with beneficiaries and intermediaries. We found only 12 national TA organizations across SSA (in Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, South Africa, Uganda, Tanzania, and Zambia) and 3 across LAC (in Colombia and Mexico), representing just 8% of our dataset.
Figure 2. Map of active TA organizations, SSA and LAC
Service positioning trends towards comprehensive over specialized offerings. Over two-thirds (68%) of mapped TA organizations describe comprehensive packages combining business support, inclusive models, and value chain development. Less than 10 organizations provide only one type of service. Consultancies are the primary providers of core business support, while NGOs were leading providers of business support and value chain development services.
Over a third of organizations (40%) complement their core offerings with hands-on agronomic support. NGOs significantly outweigh consultancies in delivering agronomic services, highlighting the challenges of effectively working in the agriculture and food sectors. The inherent complexity of the sector necessitates dedicated agriculture training on top of general business support, particularly in order for agribusinesses to meet international standards.
Figure 3. Types of TA services provided by organizations
Gender integration is standard among climate-focused TA leaders. Nearly all organizations (28) describe themselves as integrating gender equality and women’s empowerment as strategic priorities or components of specific programs, through HR support, strategy, and sourcing models.
Nature integration appears less systematized. Only 10 organizations integrate nature considerations to varying degrees, and fewer explicitly mention supporting nature-positive practices, such as agroecology, biodiversity protection and regenerative agriculture. This presents an important area for building agriSME expertise, as investor expectations
around nature-positive outcomes grow.
Figure 4. Impact areas of selected climate-specialized TA organizations
Few providers focus solely on pre-investment support. While over half (16) provide support throughout the investment cycle, fewer focus (9) on the pre-investment stage that helps SMEs reach investors and secure a first round of commercial capital. This distribution reflects the financial sustainability challenge discussed in the report: organizations focusing solely on preinvestment struggle to fund operations without committed investor capital, while those serving both stages can balance donor-funded early support with fee-generating later support.
Almost all organizations (24) examined provide impact assessment and measurement services. However, their approaches vary significantly, resulting in a wide variation of metrics that are difficult to standardize, aggregate, and compare. The tension between the efficiency of common metrics and appropriateness of context-specific assessment highlights key trade-offs in the sector.
Figure 5. Type of TA services provided by selected climate-specialized TA organizations
CHALLENGES & RECOMMENDATIONS
Our analysis and interviews identify four interconnected gaps that limit the effectiveness of TA: in information transparency, pre-investment funding, standardization, and collaboration incentives. We also provide a case study for each gap, illustrating what addressing these issues can look like in practice.
Limited visibility into the full ecosystem of TA providers prevents efficient allocation of existing funding and weakens opportunities for collaboration. Funders risk duplication in hub markets and concentration in mainstream TA areas, while agri-SMEs and TA providers rely on their immediate networks and word-of-mouth referrals. Prospero Zambia demonstrates how national providers play a critical role in reaching SMEs and building local pipelines.
A post-investment bias persists across delivery models, creating a pre-investment funding gap for early-stage agri-SMEs. Pre-investment TA requires convincing donors to fund support without guaranteed investment outcomes, and the absence of viable funding models at this stage contributes to a bottleneck in the pipeline. IDH's reVive Hub illustrates how a dedicated facility with a longer runway and lower conversion expectations can help close the gap.
Limited standardization across delivery models creates challenges for cross-program comparability. Also, repeated compliance burdens force agri-SMEs to undertake multiple incompatible climate assessments for different funders and waste limited resources. IDH's FarmFit Fund partnered with the Cerise+SPTF to develop a derisking tool that could serve as a public good to benefit other TA providers and investors in the sector.
The ecosystem lacks incentives to create common resources or shared infrastructure. Short funding cycles, competition for the same donor funding pool, and few incentives to collaborate to share information limit coordination and knowledge dissemination. The result is duplicated demands on SMEs and slower learning across the ecosystem. Smallholder SustaiNability Upscaling Programme (SSNUP) shows how a trusted intermediary can enable coordination within the investor community.
We identify four areas where coordinated action could materially improve ecosystem function, building on the case studies examined. For each opportunity, we outline specific actions in the report that funders, investors, and TA providers can take, based on examples from existing practice.
• Establish independent brokering and coordination infrastructure
• Build shared digital infrastructure while preserving local flexibility
• Address the pre-investment funding gap through dedicated facilities
• Prioritize national provider visibility and invest in frontier market development