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Cambodia

iDE has been growing prosperity in Cambodia since 1994 by building value chains and business models in agriculture, clean water, and sanitation that promote beneficial, affordable products and services.

Single Mother Builds Her Agricultural Supply Business After Earning The Trust of Farmers

“I provide an important service to the farmers. When they encounter problems with their crops, they call me or bring me the infected plants to look at.”

Sieng Sophanna, a mother of three, increased her family's income when she opened a small shop. After enrolling in the iDE agribusiness accelerator, she boosted her skill set, which has helped her grow her business and build trust with her clients.


Read more: Sieng Sophanna from Cambodia enrolled in the iDE agribusiness accelerator where she gained valuable skills that helped her grow her sales by supporting local farmers.

Cambodian children encouraged to eat nutritious foods

With funding from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, iDE rolls out global effort to improve nutritional outcomes for rural families

Despite Cambodia's economic growth, substantial progress, socio-economic and gender inequalities persist, hampering people's access to a nutritious diet, according to the World Food Programme.


Read more: iDE aims to improve nutritional outcomes for children in their first 1,000 days of life

Sanitation coverage radically increased across the country

The nation leads the world in reducing the rate of open defecation with household sanitation coverage as high as 88 percent in target provinces

Following a concerted effort by national and subnational governments, iDE and other partner organizations have joined forces to radically increase improved sanitation coverage and end the practice of defecating in the open.


Read more: The nation leads the world in reducing the rate of open defecation with household sanitation coverage as high as 88 percent in target provinces

WHAT'S NEW IN CAMBODIA

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Agricultural value chain bears fruit

How adopting a new crop helped boost incomes and climate resilience of Cambodian farmers

The World Bank says improving the performance of agricultural value chains in emerging countries like Cambodia will be crucial to ending poverty and hunger, boosting shared prosperity, and stewarding the world’s natural resources. 


Read more: iDE was instrumental in establishing the value chain, under our Climate Smart Commercial Horticulture Cambodia (CSmart) program.

Why we’re here—

Out of Cambodia’s population of 15 million people, nearly 3 million are classified as poor and as many as 8 million others teeter just above the poverty line. One bad crop or one expensive illness will pull them back under. About 90 percent of the poor live in rural areas where farming is difficult because of increasingly unreliable rainfall, water scarcity, poor infrastructure, weak institutions, and poor market linkages. More than half the rural population is still without a toilet.

What we do—

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Resilient Market Ecosystems

For developing world entrepreneurs to succeed they must participate in market ecosystems that are economically competitive, inclusive of all people, and resilient to shocks such as conflict or changing climates. By listening to every stakeholder—producers, suppliers, retailers and customers—we can overcome critical bottlenecks and develop lasting solutions. 


Learn more about iDE’s approach to resilient market ecosystems.

How We Do It —

Agriculture

iDE improves rural livelihoods and resilience by strengthening value chains for agricultural products, primarily in rice, vegetables, quick-maturity fruits, and pigs. iDE's Cambodia Agribusiness Development Facility (CADF) identifies market opportunities and constraints for small-scale farmers and then designs solutions that are implemented by local private service providers. 

We have also established Lors Thmey, a social enterprise that recruits and trains local entrepreneurs to become Farm Business Advisors, who serve their local communities by selling agricultural products and services. By improving access to technical assistance, market information, quality inputs, and new technologies, iDE enables small-scale farmers to participate more effectively in markets and reap substantial benefits.

Learn more about iDE's commitment to Agriculture.


WASH

iDE develops efficient and scalable approaches that enable rural households to purchase and use sanitary latrines. Our strategy is to remove as many barriers to latrine purchase as possible. iDE introduces product innovations, creates demand through village meetings, and strengthens the ability of rural businesses to produce and install affordable, attractive latrines. Our social enterprise, Hydrologic, sells aspirational, safe drinking-water solutions to rural households. And iDE applied Human Centered Design to develop an effective water-soap-sink device integrated with latrines, to encourage handwashing after defecation.

Learn more about iDE Cambodia's WASH research.

Learn more about iDE's commitment to WASH.


Resilience to Climate Change

Cambodia is ranked as one of the most vulnerable countries to climate change. Climate scientists predict hotter, drier dry seasons, shorter wet seasons with more intense rainstorms, and less overall predictability. With 80 percent of the population relying on rural agriculture, these climate change effects have a severe impact on many people.

iDE researches farming strategies that increase rural people’s resilience to climate variability and extreme weather. iDE helps farmers to spread their risk by growing more diverse crops in shorter cycles with water-saving technologies and climate-smart agricultural practices.

Learn more about iDE’s commitment to Smart Technologies.


Gender Equity

In Cambodia’s hierarchical society, women experience cultural barriers to accessing quality training, new technology, and government services. Women also face disparities in workload, decision-making power, and control over income and expenditures.

Focusing on women as customers and entrepreneurs, iDE strengthens their participation in rural value chains by increasing their access to technology, know-how, finance, and markets. Success in commercial farming also increases women’s self-confidence and standing in the community.

Learn more about iDE’s commitment to Gender Equity.


Nutrition

More than one in three Cambodian children under five are stunted, with approximately 45 percent of all child deaths attributed to malnutrition.

By promoting high-value, nutritious crops, iDE empowers farmers to earn more income and provide their families and communities with a more varied diet, improves access to safe water and sanitation, and helps people to avoid the gut diseases that prevent them from absorbing the nutrients gained from an improved diet. Better nutrition provides the fuel for families to move out of poverty today and ensures that the next generation reaches its full developmental potential.

Learn more about iDE’s commitment to Nutrition.

Infiltrating the market with clean water

iDE’s social enterprise, Hydrologic, won the 2018 Unilever Global Development Award!

Having safe water improves the situation of women and children, who are often responsible for fetching and boiling water.


Read more: Ceramic filters are a cost-effective way to meeting the need for clean drinking water

Design for humans by humans

Farmers are more likely to invest their money in a solution that comes from their own ideas, and from their true aspirations. iDE uses Human Centered Design to engage with the market to reveal those needs and desires to design solutions that people want to buy and entrepreneurs want to sell. Those solutions are more likely to be sustainable and cost-effective, too.


Read more: Using design thinking to solve problems

Entrepreneur Unleashes Latent Power Of Local Markets

Farmer uncomfortable knowing middlemen were profiting handsomely

Working as a cashew farmer in central Cambodia, In Laihout, 40, was uncomfortable with the fact that most of her crop was being exported to Vietnam where it was being processed and then on-sold by traders to bulk buyers at a significant profit.

Because there weren’t many processing centers in her low-income region, farmers like her were selling their cashews for small margins, only to see these foreign traders capitalize on their hard work and lack of local value chains.

But instead of accepting the situation, Laihout decided to start her own cashew collecting and processing business, initially working through a farmers’ association and community processing center in her village in Kampong Thom province, paying local farmers a fair price for their product and processing it herself.


Read more: Farmer uncomfortable knowing middlemen were profiting handsomely

iDE IN CAMBODIA

PO Box 1577, #97A, Street 19BT (Ta Phon)
Boeung Tumpun, Khan Meanchey,
Phnom Penh, Kingdom of Cambodia
Phone: +855 923 540 or +855 923 541
E-mail: Cambodia@ideglobal.org
Hours: 8:00am-5:00pm

Office Location Map

Explore iDE Cambodia's Past Projects

  • I De Ex Art Kh Man Smsu Close Out 21X8 Rh
    Sanitation Marketing Scale-Up (SMSU)

    Rolled out across seven provinces, the program facilitated the installation of more than 410,000 latrines, delivering access to improved sanitation for one in five rural Cambodian households.

    December 22, 2024

Our partners—

  • Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research
  • Ashden Awards
  • Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade
  • Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
  • Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
  • Embassy of Switzerland
  • Global Affairs Canada
  • Grand Challenges Canada
  • International Fund for Agricultural Development
  • Kiva
  • LEAP 201
  • New Zealand Aid Programme
  • Rockefeller Foundation
  • Stone Family Foundation
  • United Nations Capital Development Fund
  • United States Agency for International Development
  • Vitol Foundation
  • World Bank
  • WSSCC Global Sanitation Fund

TARISP

iDE is proud to be a contributing partner to the Tropical Agriculture Research and Information Share Point.