The goal of the Tanzania Agrodealer Strengthening Program (TASP) is to transform Tanzania’s fragmented input distribution system into an efficient, commercially viable input supply infrastructure, thus enabling smallholder farmers to have greater access to productivity-enhancing inputs and technologies.

The basic agrodealer development model used in TASP is based on CNFA’s highly successful Rockefeller-funded input supply programs that were implemented in Malawi and Western Kenya. This model has been tailored to meet the specific needs of Tanzanian smallholder farmers. The use of a guarantee facility to stimulate access to finance, agrodealer market development activities through demonstrations and field days, and business management training programs proved highly successful in Western Kenya, which faces similar distance, logistics and poverty challenges to the selected Fast Track districts of Tanzania. The Tanzanian agricultural production market faces numerous challenges in its efforts to provide economic opportunity for millions of farmers and establish food security for the nation at large. Among these challenges are market-distorting government subsidies, a fragmented input supply network, lack of output markets and poor knowledge of effective agronomic practices among farmers. CNFA/TAGMARK through TASP is working to address all of these issues.

Funded by the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), TASP is currently operating in 17 districts of Tanzania, offering additional business management training in 21 others.

Using a holistic, stakeholder-driven methodology, CNFA/TAGMARK has achieved the creation and strengthening of a network of rural agrodealers. This approach removes the Ministry of Agriculture Food Security and Cooperatives (MAFC) from a direct role in inputs purchase and distribution, fosters the growth of a commercially based rural distribution network of private agrodealers, facilitates agrodealers’ access to commercial credit and stimulates smallholder demand for improved agricultural inputs.

In the first year, CNFA focused on the five Southern Highlands districts targeted by the Government for its subsidy program (Fast Track Districts) and five districts in the Arusha, Meru and Kilimanjaro regionsI in Northern Tanzania. In Year 2, TASP has expanded into the seven other districts in Manyara and Morogoro regions. Around Arusha, CNFA integrated agrodealer development efforts with initiatives to improve Tanzania’s local seed industry, including foundation seed enterprises and local seed companies.

Early activities focused on the design of a voucher program for implementing government subsidies in a sustainable manner and on developing a network of agrodealers in the Fast Track districts to enable the implementation of this voucher program. These activities, combined with activities around Arusha focused on linking agrodealers to the local seed industry and have been scaled up to foster development of a nationwide rural market network.

In addition, TASP achieved a great deal of success in the areas of its core components aimed at strengthening the agrodealer network. Notable among these efforts are encouraging the establishment of new agrodealerships in remote, underserved areas through matching grants, technical trainings to strengthen agrodealer capacity, agrodealer association development and linking agrodealers to financial institutions.

Noting Year One successes of the Business Management Training (BMT) program in raising agrodealers’ business standards of management and acumen, the MAFC decided to exclusively link the handling of the subsidy vouchers to agrodealers’ successful completion of BMT. In response, CNFA has trained an additional 849 agrodealers in 24 districts beyond the 17 in the original TASP scope to pave the way for the National Agricultural Inputs Voucher Scheme.

By operating in the space where the interests of farmers, agrodealers, the private sector and the financial sector intersect, TASP has gained exciting new ground in increasing crop yields and incomes for an estimated 880,000 farmers and improving the livelihoods and economic opportunities for more than 3 million Tanzanians.

Accomplishments:

• 1,600 Agrodealers trained and certified through CNFA’s six-module Basic Business Management Training Course
• 17 associations advocating for agrodealer policy advancements established and supported
• Government input subsidy program redesigned to assimilate a market-friendly voucher program and rolled out in 53 districts during the 2008/9 growing season
• 116 matching investments have unleashed contributions from small businesses totaling $384,746 through CNFA funding in the amount of $283,951 to support agrodealer start-ups, add on services and output market development
• 162 agro input demand creation activities and technical trainings on product handling and safe involving 30 agro-inputs supply companies organized
  

Related Links

In Your Own Words: Mary Obadia Mbwilo of Tanzania

Program Overview: Agrodealer Strengthening Programs in Africa

Updated 6/2009