About MOTHERLAND · Vision, mission and team in Kenya and Germany

VISION

A good harvest is not enough.
The value has to stay where it grows.

A farmer can bring in an excellent harvest and still stay poor. When she cannot store it, when food is lost after harvest, when she has to sell the day she needs cash, the value goes to someone else.

So we do not only want to change how food is produced. We want to change who captures its value. Communities that are economically sovereign, where young people see a future in the land they inherited.

TODAY
2,000+
farmers in our network
517 active participations in 2025 · 83.7% report higher income
2027
€300k
annual budget, a paid core team in Kenya and Germany
Projects become an organisation
2031
15,000+
farmers, several thousand children, strong Kenyan leadership
An institution and a movement
2035
25,000
farmers · post-harvest loss ≤ 10% · income +50%
Our long-term vision

Six pillars carry us there. Siaya County is where we prove it. The model can travel wherever the same barriers exist.

A MOTHERLAND farmer holding two seed packs

Institutional strength

An organisation that does not depend on one funder, project or person.

We are the soil we eat

One story, told with dignity, that turns supporters into a movement.

Farmer prosperity

We measure what changes afterwards, not how many trainings we held.

Regenerative food systems

Regeneration has to pay off for the farmer, not only for the soil.

Technology for scale

Lima reaches ten times more people without a ten times bigger organisation.

Next generation

Young Earth Guardians show children that farming can be a future.

OUR STRATEGY 2026–2031 →

MISSION

We build the systems that let farmers keep the value of their harvest. Until communities run them on their own.

We work with smallholder farming communities in Africa, starting in Siaya County, Kenya, together with our partner MOTHERLAND CBO. Everything starts with the soil, and nothing should be lost after the harvest.

WE BUILD SYSTEMS. COMMUNITIES OWN THEM.

OUR GUIDING PRINCIPLE

“Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us.”

CARL SAGAN · PALE BLUE DOT

In 1990, Voyager 1 turned around six billion kilometres from the sun and photographed Earth: a tiny blue point of light. Everything we know happens on that dot.

The M in our name stands for Africa, the motherland of all of us. The small blue dot next to it is that planet. One home, shared by everyone, and there is no second one.

Everything we eat grows from its soil. And what we eat becomes who we are.

We are the soil we eat.

MANIFEST

Across Africa, smallholder farmers feed their families, their villages and their cities.

A MOTHERLAND farmer from Siaya County, smiling

01
They know their land better than any program designed from far away.
02
What they were never given is a system built for them.
03
Everything starts with the soil. And a good harvest only counts if it is not lost.
LIVING SOIL

Only living soil grows food that truly nourishes us.
- Regenerative farming, compost and organic fertilizers
- Soil that stores carbon
- Food with more nutrients
- Harvests that grow as the soil recovers
AFTER THE HARVEST

Post-harvest loss is not a storage problem. It is a system problem.
- Knowing how to harvest without damage
- Safe drying, storage and transport
- A fair price for quality
- A buyer who shows up
WE ARE THE SOIL WE EAT.
04
We started in Siaya County, Kenya, and build these systems together with farmers and MOTHERLAND CBO. The model can travel wherever the same barriers exist.
05
Trust comes first. Tools come second.
06
We measure ourselves by one thing: whether farmers own what we build.

I am MOTHERLAND.
We are MOTHERLAND.

Violet Atieno, Head of Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning at MOTHERLAND CBO — VIOLET ATIENO · HEAD OF MEL ✦

THE TEAM

The people
behind the work.

MOTHERLAND grew out of a question: how can technology and entrepreneurship solve the problems smallholder farmers actually face? Before founding the organization in 2023, Sebastian Fittko, Thomas Schindler and Diana Beata Krüger spent more than six months in dialogue with over 50 African entrepreneurs and experts, and mapped 324 African startups working on the post-harvest value chain, where food and income are lost between harvest and market.

Today the work on the ground is led by MOTHERLAND CBO, an independent Community Based Organization in Siaya County, which runs the field programs together with farmers. Learning from the Motherland gUG, the non-profit in Hamburg, raises funds, builds technology and partnerships, and reports to donors.

MOTHERLAND CBO · SIAYA COUNTY, KENYA