TŌTĀRA AFRICA · ZAMBIA
A Zambian non-profit that turns evidence and technical innovation into programmes that work — bringing the right expertise and partners together, and staying in to help deliver.
We exist to make evidence and innovation useful where they matter most — in the communities, institutions and decisions that shape people's lives.
One chain, real consequences
Drought changes what people eat, what they earn, where they live, and which diseases they encounter. Climate, agriculture and health are not three separate sectors we happen to work in — they are three points on the same causal chain, and what sits at the end of it is human wellbeing.
We work across that chain deliberately, because interventions designed for one point on it routinely fail at another. And two things determine whether anything on that chain holds: whether people adopt and sustain what a programme offers, and whether proven approaches survive past the funding cycle that paid for them. Those are our two cross-cutting capabilities — social and behavioural change, and sustainable implementation.
Three challenges, one chain
01
Smallholder farming carries rising climate risk on thin margins — and most decisions are made without the data to see that risk coming. We make it visible, with applied remote sensing and field-tested data tools.
02
Health gains stall less on what's known than on whether systems adopt, deliver and sustain it. We work as a systems partner — on delivery and whether investments last, not just design.
03
Climate pressure is the shock running underneath farming and health, and the most exposed communities have the least support to adapt. We build resilience into that work rather than running it as a separate programme.
Technical solutions only create impact when people use them and institutions sustain them. Behaviour change and adoption are built into everything we do — not added at the end.
A climate adaptation measure only reduces risk if households adopt it. A yield model only improves a farmer’s position if lenders and farmers act on what it tells them. A health service only improves outcomes if people reach it before they are seriously ill — and contact with the health system is regular in the first five years of life through immunisation schedules, then becomes episodic and illness-driven. Preventive health-seeking remains uncommon.
That is why we treat social and behavioural change as a core technical capability that shapes design, implementation and evaluation across all three sectors — not as a communications component added once a programme is built.
It is also the point where the chain either delivers or doesn’t. Climate, agriculture and health connect through the systems people actually live in, and behaviour is where those systems either improve someone’s wellbeing or fail to.
From evidence to implementation. From implementation to systems change. Bridging what's known and what works — that's the job, not a by-product of it.
Our defining capability. We connect international academic and technical expertise to in-country delivery — and ensure that what is learned in the field flows back into the research. Our formal partnership with the University of Auckland puts advanced remote sensing methodology directly into operational decision-making.
We build and hold together the partnerships that complex programmes require — across government, universities, donors, local consortia and the private sector. Within months of incorporation we assembled research, implementation and delivery partners across two programme areas.
Detailed founding Articles, a not-for-profit corporate structure, a practising lawyer as Company Secretary, and an Advisory Council providing independent technical oversight. Built in from inception, not retrofitted for a funding round.
Programme design, proposal development and donor strategy informed by senior experience inside humanitarian and multilateral funding institutions — including from the donor side of the table.
A live pilot with Good Nature Agro applying satellite-based yield estimation to smallholder maize fields as an input to their framework. Tōtāra provides in-country presence, implementation coordination and the bridge between academic research and field application; the University of Auckland provides the remote sensing expertise.
An agricultural remote-sensing programme with SAICRIO and the University of Zambia, in development with Zambia's Ministry of Agriculture. Tōtāra leads implementation and holds the consortium together.
A health-research consortium of Tōtāra, SAICRIO and SynerHEALTH, developing adolescent health and behaviour-change programming in Eastern Province. Tōtāra leads, social behavioral change and knowledge management, and provides cohesion to the collaborative.
We work with governments, universities, donors, philanthropic funders, local consortia and private-sector partners. If you’re building something in this space, we’d like to hear from you.
Contact Tōtāra