TANZANIA – Tanzania Agricultural Development Bank (TADB), has entered into a strategic partnership with the Clinton Development Initiative (CDI), an initiative of the Clinton Foundation, that will allow the agri-bank to disburse up-to US$500,000 (TZS 1.15 billion) to unlock the soybean value-chain in Iringa Region, Tanzania.

According to the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed between the two parties, the partnership aims at enhancing financial accessibility to 29 Agriculture Marketing Cooperatives (AMCOs).

The cooperatives will in turn impact 2,900 CDI supported farmers engaged in the production and marketing of soybeans, for a period of three years.

“This MoU has therefore set a loan facility that will be used to help farmer leaders, village community banks (VICOBA), and AMCOs members to have access to basic seeds to multiply into Quality Declared Seed (QDS) and certified seeds for producing soybean grains.”

Japhet Justine – TADB’s Managing Director

Japhet Justine, TADB’s Managing Director indicated that the partnership has enable the state-owned development bank to partake in the soybeans value-chain for the first time.

The intervention is timely as there have been an increasing demand for soya as a fortifier in human foods with an active cadre of small-to-medium-scale entrepreneurial processors, mostly women, servicing this requirement.

Similarly, there is a growing demand for soya as an ingredient in animal feeds, especially for poultry.

“This MoU has therefore set a loan facility that will be used to help farmer leaders, village community banks (VICOBA), and AMCOs members to have access to basic seeds to multiply into Quality Declared Seed (QDS) and certified seeds for producing soybean grains.

“The AMCOs will also get aggregation loans for them to have the capacity of undertaking early purchase of soybeans and post-harvest handling linkage to markets,” Japhet stated.

Under the partnership, CDI has committed to contributing resources to put towards financial training and agribusiness development support as a catalytic investment to TADB, whereby TADB will disburse the respective funds in different phases during the partnership period.

“The investment will help soybean small-scale producers put more money into their pockets, as CDI’s cooperatives are better positioned to serve their members.

“For several years, we have seen success with input and output loans through our cooperatives. It is now timely to scale up the model in the region,” Monsiapile Kajimbwa, Tanzania Country Director at CDI said.

In season 2019-2021, CDI successfully operationalized the input loan with 56 VICOBA members, an output loan arrangement with three AMCOS in Iringa, and mobilized 106 farmer leaders to become certified and produce quality declared seeds (QDS) for other farmers in their communities.

CDI is actively working with nearly 80,000 smallholder farmers across Tanzania, Malawi and Rwanda, and is made possible through support by the Nationale Postcode Loterij.

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