Uniting Tanzania’s seed sector: Accelerating demand-driven transformation through public -private partnerships
Tanzania’s ACCELERATE Initiative is transforming the seed sector by linking research, markets, and farmers through public–private partnerships, boosting improved seed adoption, strengthening systems, and driving demand-led agricultural growth.
- Markets
- Digital innovation
- crops
Uniting Tanzania’s seed sector: Accelerating demand-driven transformation through public -private partnerships
Tanzania’s ACCELERATE Initiative is transforming the seed sector by linking research, markets, and farmers through public–private partnerships, boosting improved seed adoption, strengthening systems, and driving demand-led agricultural growth.
Open Tanzania’s seed sector is at a turning point
In February 2026, farmers, breeders, regulators, grain traders and processors, seed producers, digital innovators, humanitarian institutions and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) gathered in Arusha, Tanzania, to reflect on progress under the Accelerated Variety Turnover for Open-Pollinated Crops in Tanzania (ACCELERATE) Project and to confront a pressing question: how do we move from successful pilots to a fully market-connected, self-sustaining seed system?
Led by Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT (The Alliance), through the Pan-Africa Bean Research Alliance (PABRA), in collaboration with International Maize and Wheat Improvement Centre (CIMMYT), Tanzania Agricultural Research Institute (TARI), and Tanzania Official Seed Certification Institute (TOSCI), the Initiative is reshaping how improved varieties move from research stations to farmers’ fields and ultimately to markets.
ACCELERATE centers grain traders and processors to drive varietal change, aligning market demand with seed supply and farmer incentives, while tackling slow adoption of improved varieties, weak seed systems with limited access to early generation seed, and growing climate pressures on productivity.