Building seed business hubs around women and youth in Tanzania

Working with private seed companies, ICRISAT is helping integrate more women and youth into seed production enterprises in Tanzania. Recently we supported the efforts of the seed company Mbozi Highlands (MHEG), to enhance the production, promotion, marketing and adoption of new high-yielding varieties of groundnut and sorghum in the country. This was by designing and developing training manuals to train farmers, identifying and contracting 92 new seed producer groups (women and youth); facilitating inputs for 100 seed producer groups; and identifying suitable areas for establishing 300 variety demonstration plots.

Adopting our initiative – Seed Revolving Fund, Youth Engagement and Gender Inclusion (SRF-YEGI) – the company is focusing on increasing the number of youth and women participating in specific nodes along the seed value chains. Mr Aron Mwalughelo, Managing Director, MHEG, said that the company is commited to working closely with women and youth groups to develop and sustain seed business hubs for both crops – groundnut and sorghum – in the Southern Highlands of Tanzania.

For the first year of activity (2019-2020 cropping season), women and youth seed producer groups produced, cleaned and delivered seeds to MHEG as per agreed contract. Eight groups produced 1.2 t and 4.8 t certified seeds of groundnut and sorghum, respectively.