Mr Leonard Muhoni is an Agri-business and Marketing Specialist with Marketing Infrastructure Value Addition and Rural Finance (MIVARF) Tanzania.,handling the Producer Empowerment and Marketing linkage component. Temitope Musowo tracked him down at the on going capacity building programme for stakeholders m taking place at Nyakahoja Conference Centre in Mwanza,Mwanza Region of Tanzania,Mr Leonard bears his mind on the significance of the stakeholders meeting,the consortium approach and sundry issues,except:
Which organisation put this programme together?
It is a stakeholders workshop which is more or less like an orientation workshop, following the extension of the programme for two years which ordinarily ended in December last year,so we gather all stakeholders together to chat the way forward in terms of orientation on how to implement the programme towards the end.
Who are the various stakeholders that makes up this meeting?
These includes officials from the Local Government Authorities, implementing agencies,service providers,consortia,pravate companies who are taking the capacity building to the smallholder producers,we also have officials from the regional offices, those who are dealing with the cooperative issues ,they are all represented here, we have representatives from the financial institutions who are also partner in the programme .
Today you are looking at the consortia approach, how will you explain this model to a layman on the street?
The consortium approach is more of a trading platform where we have buyers or potential buyers who are not sure of where to get the produce,let's take paddy as an example, we have buyers and processors dealing in a large scale who find it it difficult to get their raw materials, in the other hand ,we have the smallholder producers who have difficulties understanding what the market is ,so,the programme is an ideal of having a platform where partners in this value chain come together, the sellers of farm inputs,financial service providers and the off takers,all meet together to trade ,whatever weakness any of the groups have within their enclave,take for instance, the smallholder farmer groups who are organised under Agricultural Marketing Cooperative Society, AMCOS or SACOS come up with their needs with the buyers at the platform level.
How often does this kind of programme come up?
We usually have our review workshop which comes up quarterly, where we meet with various stakeholders to have a review of our activities, how well are we achieving our set objectives.
What exactly are the participants expected to take home from this programme?
In this meeting specifically, the take home for the participants is that we have come to the end of the programme, now that the programme has been extended for another two years,we have to do things differently and also consolidate on what we have achieved before in our various programmes especially Marketing Infrastructure, Value Addition and Rural Financing, we are consolidating on all these and we are doing it through the consortium approach, then we are reviewing some areas,for example, we change the number of service providers we were working with and they will be working hand in hand with others and their specific activities which they will have to and they will have to understand what the marketing requirements for the season is,so they just have to work together.
We have done quite a lot, so, basically, we are consolidating on what has been done. There have been construction of roads,construction of other facilities, capacity building for the smallholder producers, a lot has been achieved so we are consolidating on all these.
So much must have gone into all these,who is bankrolling the programme?
This is a government programme, it is being financed by the Government of Tanzania, we also have our foreign partners, International Fund for Agricultural Development, (IFAD), African Development Bank, (AFDB), those are the organisations that are financing it, the beneficiaries also contributing their own in terms of infrastructure investment, through the community coming up with 5 % of the investment cost,in the value addition investment, the beneficiaries are also making 25% contribution of the cost in terms of equipment and machines.
In the course of carrying out my research, I observed that more attention is given to marketing while production don't seem to get same attention, why ?What's
That could be a misconception ,though, originally we designed it with the mind that that there are more issues with marketing than production ,but in the course of implementing the programme, we realised that we didn't have enough volumes to market, so, we quickly adjust to take care of that. That was addressed long time ago. We ensure that the smallholder producers have access to finance, inputs, the right seed,fertiliser and so on so they can harvest more. This was not there by design initially but that has since been taken care of.
Talking about consortium we are talking about inputs and outputs, so we are taking care of the smallholder producers and they are transforming from subsistence farmers, we are talking of 0 - 5 acres,so there are more efforts to ensuring increase in production.
Are you also looking at irrigation scheme to ensure the farmers can produce all year round in order to meet up with the market demand?
That is actually a challenge but this programme by mandate is unable to look into that. That is being addressed by sharing the information with the Ministry of Agriculture, that this is what is needed to be done,irrigation scheme is capital intensive, we know this will enhance more production,but the government is working towards that I believe. This programme has limitations in terms of investment you know,IFAD is doing more in the area of capacity building, the software aspect of it,so also AFDB have it's specific priority as well ,market places and storage facility.
Your message for the students of University of Ibadan here on internship?
My Messege is that this is a quite good learning opportunity, to have access to practical knowledge about what you have learnt in school, and also having an opportunity to demonstrate what have learnt in another environment ,you have to take advantage of this opportunity, you will learn a lot, some of the things you will learn you may have to go and apply back home as they fit into your environment. Make a good use of this opportunity.
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