CRAFT project adds value to the agriculture sector in Tanzania

The CRAFT project is supporting Tanzanian businesses build their resilience to climate change. Below is a story from one of the businesses working in the common bean value chain.

This article was also published in the Daily News

Agriculture is one of the economic drivers in Tanzania with the country benefitting from a diverse production base that includes livestock, staple food crops and a variety of cash crops. While the sector’s GDP has more than tripled in the last 10 years, farmers and private sector actors still face considerable challenges. Declining export revenues, land acquisition hurdles and smallholder farmers struggling to access economically viable technology, adequate storage facilities, markets and credit have affected private investment.

The Climate Resilient Agribusiness for Tomorrow (CRAFT) project through its Climate Innovation and Investment Facility (CIIF) aims to leverage co-investments from private sector actors while promoting climate-smart solutions and innovations in targeted agricultural value chains. The project works with, and through the private sector to promote climate-smart agriculture-related innovations at farming systems and value chain level.

Rogimwa Agro-Company Ltd, headquartered in Mbeya Region, is one of the private sector actors that the CRAFT project partners with in the common bean value chain. Through the partnership, Rogimwa will support 6,000 farmers to increase their productivity and incomes while guaranteeing a sustainable supply of good quality farm produce to Rogimwa.

With the grant funds received from the CRAFT project, Rogimwa has embarked on training its farmers on climate-smart practices such as post-harvest handling. The company has also set up aggregation points equipped with tarpaulins, moisture meters, weighing scales and solar driers to support farmers in drying their produce so that they produce higher quality beans and attract a better price.

“The CRAFT project has empowered a number of businesses to take advantage of the opportunities available in the agriculture sector. With the additional funds from the project, we have been able to invest in solar dryers and quality seed to sell to our farmers. Once our farmers put the good agronomic practices they have learnt from our demonstration gardens into practice, they will be able to get a better yield and increase their income,” said Aloyce Kamuzora, Rogimwa’s Marketing Manager .

The CRAFT project supports Tanzanian businesses and cooperatives working in the Sunflower, Potato, Common bean and Sorghum value chains. The project is implemented in Tanzania, Kenya and Uganda with funding from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of The Netherlands. SNV Netherlands Development Organisation is implementing the project in partnership with Wageningen University and Research (WUR), CGIAR’s Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS), Agriterra and Rabo Partnerships.

For more about the CRAFT project