The Agricultural Markets Development Trust (AMDT) has conducted a mentorship programme to smallholder agribusiness entrepreneurs to build their capacity in the agriculture sector.
The AMDT Chief Executive Officer, Mr Charles Ogutu, told the Daily News that the mentorship initiative targets to establish a linkage between creating agribusiness for women and related industries for adding agricultural products value chains.
“Our philosophy is to create organic positive changes in the operations of these potential entrepreneurs by affording them an opportunity to see first-hand and learn practically from those who have gone through the process and excelled,” Mr Ogutu said recently.
The programme is designed to link farmers, small-scale processors and agribusiness women with successful businesswomen who are running some of the fastest enterprises in the country.
He said mentorship is fast-tracking knowledge transfer to women entrepreneurs in the world.
Mr Ogutu said through the mentorship programme, some advanced agribusiness women visited flour mills, large poultry farms and packaging facilities as well as large fruits plantations and fruits processing facilities of mentors in Iringa, Dar es Salaam, Rukwa, Ruvuma and Pwani while the mentees were from Lindi, Njombe, Ruvuma, Iringa, Dodoma, Mbeya, Rukwa, Manyara and Singida.
The Deputy Minister for Agriculture, Anthony Mavunde said recently in Dodoma that the government’s commitment was to transform the agricultural economy by facilitating investment in agribusinesses and expanding sector market systems to cater for more farmers and processors.
Also, the government will continue to focus on unlocking major bottlenecks in the sector to open up opportunities and increase productivity and efficiency.
Through the mentorship programme, Zuhura Mpinga, one of the 30 mentees who participated in the mentorship programme met and engaged with her mentors on several issues, including business formalisation, taxes, regulatory frameworks, markets, investment and business expansion.
