Project description / objective
SLR works in the eastern DRC to enable households to surmount poverty and chronic vulnerability, catalyse inclusive economic growth in the fragile, conflict-affected setting of Ituri Province, and promote an evolution of the region’s socioeconomic system into a more resilient and inclusive one.
Market systems focus
Land-titling and conflict-resolution services
Land and natural resource access drives conflict in Ituri Province, worsened by ethnic land systems, weak governance and external interests. Absentee landlords, unclear titles and displacement create disputes despite available land. Resolving conflicts, participative mapping and affordable titling are essential for peace and economic recovery.
Input distribution system for staple food crops
Ituri's farmers benefit from rich soil and rainfall, avoiding chemical fertilisers. However, poor infrastructure and militia activity limit access to improved seeds. Traditional seed-saving reduces productivity and agro-processing competitiveness. Market-based models for distributing improved seed offers potential to enhance agricultural productivity.
Cacao and coffee processing and export
Mahagi and Mambasa territories produce coffee and cacao respectively, but face challenges. Mahagi's coffee is often smuggled into Uganda. Mambasa's cacao declines due to underinvestment and militia-controlled export routes. Successful North Kivu examples of buyer-community-government cooperation around traceability systems illustrate potential ways to address these constraints
Supporting services for socially and environmentally responsible business models
Decades of humanitarian aid led Ituri's NGOs to replace market functions, creating aid dependency. Many NGOs pursue income-generating activities and social enterprise models emphasising responsibility and inclusion, and potentially contributing to conflict-resilience. Entrepreneurial NGOs in sectors like wild honey offer an interesting opportunity to look at conflict-sensitivity in a new way.
Water supply system and water governance
Government and humanitarian failure to provide durable water infrastructure in Mambasa drives community distrust and exclusion, worsening nutrition and conflict. However, community water governance could foster resolution and resilience. Local entrepreneurs showed interest in water services, offering opportunities to strengthen cohesion, support entrepreneurship, and influence humanitarian norms.
Programme approach
SLR adapted traditional MSD to accommodate its unusual context in Ituri and its food-system and nutrition objectives, for example, accepting greater visibility for the programme than conventional ‘facilitation’ recommends, as well as considering non-market systems like public health or household hygiene. SLR’s signature approach engaged communities to co-create their own development plans, then facilitated the entry of private-sector, civil-society and government entities. SLR hypothesised that win-win economic opportunities would encourage cooperation among historically conflicting market actors.
Programme interventions
Land-titling and conflict-resolution services
- Piloted affordable land-titling services with local university
Supported a local university to introduce affordable land-titling services to farmer cooperatives and local government in Mambasa territory. - Facilitated advocacy for reduction in land-titling fees
Advocated with local government to reduce land-title fees for smallholder farmers and permit them to pay fees in instalments (e.g. after harvest time). - Introduced OHADA standards
Helped farmer cooperatives adopt Organization for the Harmonization of Business Law in Africa (OHADA) standards for resolving land and natural-resource disputes.
Input distribution system for staple food crops
- Input distribution network strengthening
Supported a Ugandan seed company to expand and strengthen its network of agro-dealers and mobile agents selling high-performing hybrid maize. - Value-chain financing for improved seeds
Brokered pilot effort to vet farmer groups and offer high-productivity hybrid maize seeds on partial credit, paired with buying arrangements with nearby maize-milling operations; crowded in imitators in potatoes and rice. - Conventional agribusiness financing
Facilitated entry of microfinance institutions, creation of VSLAs, and expansion of one commercial bank’s products to finance larger-scale maize, rice and potato seed investments by farmer groups.
Cacao and coffee processing and export
- Export duty reduction advocacy
Supported provincial government to advocate with DRC Prime Minister’s office to improve export conditions to make Iturian cacao and coffee more competitive on international market. - Sustainable cacao supply chain traceability
Assisted cacao buyers with traceability requirements to collaborate with EU deforestation-free chocolate requirements; collaborated with other USAID partners to explore an initiative to promote shade-grown cacao in the Okapi buffer zone. - Coffee operational efficiencies
Supported seasonal coffee processor to diversify into maize processing in the off-season to sustain operational costs year-round pending growth in domestic coffee production volume.
Supporting services for socially and environmentally responsible business models
- Inclusive supplier clubs
Guided a Mambasa social enterprise to develop a supplier club model with indigenous communities to harvest high-quality wild honey based on guaranteed prices and minimum standards. - Alternatives to mining economy livelihoods
Cooperated with commercially oriented women- and youth-led NGOs to establish business models for poultry farming, pig farming and mushroom and soybean cultivation.
Water supply system and water governance
- Pilot social-enterprise water delivery model
Piloted alternative water-access model in Mambasa territory that combines social-enterprise installation and maintenance of water infrastructure with community-led determination of appropriate water-usage rates.
N.B. Traction in this sector was limited by the physical distance and the militia activity separating Bunia from western Mambasa; following SLR’s closure, communities plan to expand this model with partial support from EU development funding.
Notable results
Enduring systemic change
Land-titling and conflict-resolution services
SLR staff observed a mindset shift among some traditional chiefs who became more open to collaborating with smallholder farmers on land-title issues - including sometimes advocating directly on behalf of these farmers - because they realised that in exchange for delivering this ‘advocacy service,’ the farmers in their chiefdom would invest in their land and improve agricultural productivity.
Input distribution system for staple food crops
The seed-on-partial-credit model promoted by SLR - originally piloted with a Ugandan maize seed distributor - was imitated by rice seed market actors and a new entrant in the potato value chain from North Kivu, benefitting at least 2,000 farming families to date.
Cacao and coffee processing and export
The Congolese national government reduced export tariffs on Ituri cacao by 50 per cent to begin addressing competitiveness challenges.
Note on market systems Supporting services for socially and environmentally responsible business models and Water supply system and water governance:
SLR was unable to assess early signs of systemic changes in these market systems before it closed down; this is a reminder that MSD can be unpredictable and many efforts do not succeed.
Impact for target beneficiaries
- Land re-mapping and redistribution effort co-launched by SLR with the provincial government of Ituri, the National Land Reform Commission (CONAREF), the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), and the Christian Bilingual University of Congo (UCBC) activity continues without SLR participation and will contribute to equitable land reform and conflict reduction.
- 37 cooperatives restructured themselves according to the Organization for the Harmonization of Business Law in Africa (OHADA) model.
- 380 adults obtained legally recognised and documented tenure rights through 21 VSLAs, which will continue to finance titles on a revolving basis.
- 1,100 marginalised people were included in economically productive activities directly supported by SLR.
- 5,841 households farming 10,623 hectares accessed - via commercial networks - improved inputs and accompanying technical guidance on good agricultural practices (including efficient use of certified seed, climate-resilient techniques, Fall Armyworm management, aflatoxin prevention, soil-fertility management and more regenerative techniques eschewing field-burning or deep-ploughing) as a direct result of SLR’s partnerships.
- 1,288 maize farmers in Djugu territory (the most insecure of Ituri’s five territories during 2020-2025) were able to add beans and potatoes to their production regimes - thereby improving household incomes and nutrition.
- 90 indigenous households in Okapi rainforest area adopted semi-modern apiculture techniques and increased annual revenues five- to tenfold thanks to a supplier arrangement with local social enterprise selling wild honey to North Kivu grocery and pharmaceutical market.
- 300 women-led households began receiving revenue from rosemary production for export SLR facilitated with an Aru-based processing company.
- 796 smallholder farmers began producing nutritious crops or animals like soybeans, mushrooms, vegetables, chickens or pigs through social-enterprise business models.
Note on impact measurements
As of the sudden shuttering of USAID in early 2025, end-of-project evaluations were just beginning for SLR, and it closed six months prior to its scheduled end date. Consequently, many of the results described here are “good enough” measurements based on the project’s own data collection and its partners’ qualitative observations, and not all indicators were fully vetted according to its monitoring and evaluation plan. Similarly, several end-of-project learning efforts (like an outcome harvest) meant to uncover unintended changes to the system (both positive and negative), especially in SLR’s ‘blind spots’, were aborted, limiting its contributions to the discourse on MSD and resilience programming fostering systemic change in fragile and conflict settings. Similarly, household- and firm-level endline data-collection was interrupted and limits the ability of the project to estimate indirect outcomes (most of the intervention results listed above are limited to the direct outcomes of SLR’s work). However, SLR’s former staff continue to monitor the work of its partners and hope to continue to learn from the long-term results of its interventions.
Do not hesitate to contact us for informal insights emerging since this profile was finalised in late 2025.
Read the blog: Navigating systemic resilience trade-offs in conflict settings: examples from Ituri, DRC
[Updated November 2025]