The MAPA project addresses rural poverty in Bolivia’s Valley areas, located between 1,000 and 3,500 meters above sea level. In this setting, MAPA aims to enhance incomes and employment opportunities of the poor through a market-driven strategy by improving producer’ access to markets and by stimulating new market demand. The project seeks to catalyse and facilitate the formation and strengthening of enterprises, reducing transaction costs and increasing competitiveness all along selected commodity sub-sector chains, from inputs to the final market. Project assistance will be directed at alleviating constraints limiting access to: basic resources, services and infrastructure; technology; markets; and a supportive policy and institutional environment.
The project provides technical assistance to organisations that in turn represent or assist farmers in four departments with Valleys ecoregions in Bolivia. The project team focuses on: work to improve competitive advantage; identify and transfer best agricultural practices; emphasise development of agroenterprises; and establish linkages to target markets.
MAPA is the second country-specific intervention by CARE, undertaken undertaken in the scope of the USAID’s global “RAISE” Indefinite Quantity Contract (IQC) for which Chemonics and CARE USA signed an overall subcontract.