By CRS Afghanistan
When Opportunity Meets Uncertainty
Afghanistan’s agricultural sector has enormous potential. Products such as pomegranates, grapes, raisins, saffron, and pine nuts already generate hundreds of millions of dollars in export earnings each year, with substantial opportunities to expand production and reach new markets.
Yet in this fragile and conflict-affected context, many small and medium-sized enterprises and farmers continue to face barriers to growth. Limited access to testing, technical advice, storage infrastructure, and reliable market relationships can make even promising investments difficult to justify.
For businesses like Kanda Fruit, a medium-sized Afghan agribusiness, the challenge is finding practical ways to invest in the services and systems needed to compete in increasingly demanding horticulture markets.
Through its Pathways to Prosperity initiative, Catholic Relief Services (CRS) Afghanistan is working with private-sector partners to mobilize agricultural investment in Afghanistan, where businesses face high risks, uncertain returns, and systemic market constraints. This initiative complements the World Bank Group (WBG)’s broader private sector strategy in Afghanistan and AgriConnect priorities by using catalytic funding to encourage agribusinesses to commit their own resources to commercially viable value chain investments that ultimately benefit small-scale producers and create jobs. This approach is at the core of a more direct and enhanced partnership with the WBG on rural livelihoods.
One lesson is already clear: agribusinesses are willing to invest their own capital when viable opportunities exist and risks are shared.
As CRS engaged agribusinesses across priority value chains, companies demonstrated a stronger appetite for co-funding than anticipated. CRS initially expected businesses to contribute between 30% and 50% of the catalytic grant. In some cases, more established companies committed twice the amount of CRS support, highlighting the potential to unlock substantial private capital in Afghanistan’s agricultural sector.
Beyond Production
Over the past decade, CRS has worked with more than 30,000 farming households and hundreds of rural communities across Afghanistan, supporting livelihoods, market access, climate-smart agriculture, and resilience-building efforts. These programs improved production, strengthened farmer organizations and expanded market opportunities. They also revealed an important lesson: increasing production alone is not enough.
Agricultural growth depends not only on production but also on the services, incentives, and relationships that connect farmers to markets.Businesses and farmers need access to testing, advisory services, storage, logistics, and reliable buyers. Without them, it becomes difficult to improve competitiveness, access higher-value markets, and sustain long-term growth.
CRS also found that many essential market functions already exist. The priority is strengthening connections between farmers, businesses, and buyers while improving access to services that help markets work more effectively.
Years of experience revealed another important insight: many businesses already understand what investments are needed to improve competitiveness and expand opportunities for farmers. Yet uncertainty, limited technical capacity, high upfront costs, and unclear returns often prevent those investments from moving forward.
