The Strengthening African Rural Smallholders (STARS) programme is a partnership between Cordaid and the Mastercard Foundation. The five-year programme (2017-2021) developed market systems to improve access to finance and markets for over 200,000 farmers in Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Rwanda and Senegal. Its strategy was based on three core pillars; access to finance, value chain development and monitoring, evaluation and learning.