The (ethical) objectives of Intersection Traders
Intersection Traders seeks to achieve a number of outcomes through our supply chain and sales chain activities (what’s a sales chain? See our overview on ‘ideas in ethical sales chains’). These are:
Act as a high-impact inclusive development program in our source regions
We apply peer-reviewed science to both judge our impact and to guide our actions. As contributors to the science on inclusive rural development (see our ‘published papers post here) we understand better than anyone what is needed for a supply chain program to act as a viable and high-impact development program. Our post on these needs can be reviewed here identifying three core requirements for a market-based program (such as a coffee supply chain) to act as a development program. We call these three core requirements ‘The Crowdy Three’ because they tend to ‘crowd’ each other out when supply chains are not designed explicitly to achieve them. In-fact, we are pretty sure ours is the only supply chain program in existence that can achieve the crowdy three currently.
The ‘crowdy three’ objectives are:
Pro-poor participation in the program – this means we have a participation profile that is at least the same as that for the overall target population (i.e. coffee supply chain participants in our source regions) but which should include more representation from disadvantaged cohorts in that community
Value from participation – this means that suppliers and other participants get ‘more’ from participating in our supply chain. We typically regard this as more income but are also seeking to measure it in terms of wealth accumulation (because a lot of household income can be diverted to factors that don’t improve households’ welfare – e.g. see our work published in World Development on income hiding behaviours within the household that reduce household welfare reviewed here and published here)
The ability of the program to scale to a nationally or globally significant level – this means that we aim for our program to go beyond village or (small) region borders to generate (positive) development impacts at scale. Our specific aims here are for our program to support globally important outcomes by acting as a nationally-significant program across a number of countries.
Financial sustainability, innovation and impact measurement
Given the potential long-term impact of our program as a development and capacity-building initiative, it is important that it is financially sustainable, and maintains and grows impact at the individual, household, community and regional level. Our goals in relation to this are:
To establish and maintain appropriate governance of Intersection Traders as an independent entity and in its actions that support our impact mission and that supports financial sustainability and scale growth
To establish and maintain transparency and communication initiatives that build trust in our model as an impact-led program and one that delivers quality produce to our customers and partners
To maintain an explicit focus on innovation with a key concern of that being to drive increases in inclusion, social impact and competitiveness to maintain and grow our goal to be the most important coffee supply chain initiative for development globally
To establish a formal impact assessment regime linked to external (independent) researchers preferably located in source countries to demonstrate our impact, identify issues with impacts in a timely way, and to build capacity within local communities regarding technical capabilities in research and evaluation.
Community ownership of IP and supply chain activities at the relevant scale
We envisage a future where the countries we work within hold full responsibility and capability to procure and export high quality coffee (green beans) to target markets we operate in. While we will still work in those countries to operationalise supply chain governance models (e.g. to inhibit non-target activities from sovereign interventions) our aim is to transfer all knowledge regarding operational aspects to actors within those countries. This involves a very substantial transfer of knowledge and capability that is effectively entirely missing from current supply chains – a form of economic colonialism. Our objective is to reverse this trend but also to show that people in western countries don’t need to ‘lose’ in doing so. Instead, through smart design of supply chain programs, and a willingness to share in the benefits from those, there is scope to both build a more equitable world and to drink a better coffee at a lower price.
Seeking inclusivity in ‘sales chains’ activities
We don’t just want to innovate in the procurement side of our supply chain. We are aiming to pilot ‘sales chains’ programs that give disadvantaged individuals and households in our final market areas the ability to increase income and independence. Our current view of this approach is to build sales approaches for which disadvantaged households and individuals can act as small-area distributors. This aspect is a key reason we are focused on building a sales chain model that involves direct sales to our customers – it enables us to implement additional approaches that build value for customers while also distributing benefits further than would otherwise be the case.
Developing, testing, implementing and promoting new, more impactful models of business
Underpinning the objectives outlined above, we believe that there is an overarching need to:
Develop new models of doing business to support these objectives
To test those for their ability to deliver against our core objectives
To implement them in a sustainable governance framework, and
To describe and promote those to be adopted more widely by other organisations
We know that in pushing these boundaries that mistakes will be made. Mistakes that are learnt from are investments in a better future. While we try to avoid obvious mistakes, we also know that much of what we do is being built in a complex and dynamic environment – as such we seek an adaptive mindset to identify resilient and socially impactful business models in all of our work.