Kenyan honey producer increased the income of 2,750 Kenyan subsistence

Honey Care Africa, an IFC-supported small business whose supply chain has doubled the incomes of some of Kenya's poorest people, is the winner of a prestigious United Nations Sustainable Development award. The firm has received the Equator prize, a US $30,000 cash award honouring community-based poverty reduction initiatives in countries on or near the equator, home to the worlds greatest concentrations of both biological wealth and human poverty.

Honey Care's business model enables local farmers to become beekeepers via a small-scale financing program whereby their roughly $160 cost of necessary equipment such as hives and protective suits is covered by future sales of honey. Though at times there is individual ownership of hives, the firm prefers to work via local community groups that enable farmers to collectively lease or buy equipment and receive Honey Care's technical and management training. Its partner Africa Now is also working to develop this financing program into a sustainable micro leasing scheme. The Equator Initiative is awarded by the United Nations Development Program in partnership with Canada, the World Conservation Union (IUCN), the Nature Conservancy, and others. The jury awarding the prize to Honey Care and 26 other recipients included Nobel Peace prize laureate H.E. Oscar Arias Sanchez of Costa Rica, 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development Preparatory Chairman Emil Salim of Indonesia, and others.

As a recipient of the Equator Prize, Honey Care will be involved in a 2003 campaign to improve community-to-community learning and the knowledge necessary for advocacy and policy impact. In this way, lessons drawn from Honey Care will be used to create an enabling environment for the transfer and adaptation of its successful practices on a national and global scale.