Shared Experiences in Tanzania and Madagascar: How Two Projects Can Learn From Each Other

Who do we remember most from our visit to Tanzania back in March? For Christelle, it is Cherry Mumwi, who proudly showed us her tree nursery and then walked us around the agroforestry plot that she has created with her friend and business partner Hussein Ramadan. She also later served us locally grown, organic food in her one-room restaurant that she plans to expand.

For me, it was Zubeda Omary, who has made a thriving business out of selling different types of organic compost. The best, she said, contains rabbit urine and dung — and she showed us how her rabbits are kept in cages specially designed to collect both.

Christelle and I met these memorable women on a visit to the Ukijani project, which operates in six districts of Tanzania’s central plateau. We were accompanied by Shoma Nangale, who is the Ukijani Project Manager. In October it will be Shoma’s turn to head to North-East Madagascar and visit the sister project Mirieka, of which Christelle is Project Manager.  

Both projects focus on women’s empowerment through sustainable natural resource management. Ukijani and Mirieka have the same goal and expected outcomes — but they operate in very different contexts. This makes an exchange of ideas interesting, challenging and potentially very enriching.

The concept of Local Service Providers

Cherry and Zubeda are Local Service Providers (LSPs). This means that they have each registered under Tanzanian law as a business offering services to local farmers. As respected members of their communities, they have specific expertise that they can demonstrate in a practical manner, offering advice and at the same time selling their product(s) (e.g., tree seedlings, compost, bio-pesticides) to others.

The concept of LSPs is well-rooted in Tanzania, to the extent that some have established their own LSP association to exchange business ideas, experiences and to increase the number of clients to whom they offer services. This association now has over 45 members.

In Madagascar, paysan(ne) relais is a well-known system of anchoring agricultural knowledge in the community through the training of selected individuals who then advise other farmers. The intention, however, is to spread knowledge; it is not to establish a business.

LSPs, by contrast, are market-oriented from the start. Those supported through Ukijani specialize in a wide range of services, sometimes only indirectly linked to farming. For example, women are often attracted to establishing small food processing enterprises from sustainably grown production. Supplying ingredients for school meals, such as nutritious, multi-grained flour, is one important market that they have identified. Teachers can feel confident that their pupils are eating healthily, while the women can look forward to regular orders if they maintain the quality of their product.

The acronym guiding LSPs is AIMS: Advisory, Input and Marketing Services. All LSPs work on maintaining a strong client base, expanding or at least regularly updating the services that they offer — and adapting to demand. Some serve as middle(wo)men, visiting farmers in remote locations and providing them with an opportunity to sell their products and to purchase necessary inputs such as tools or compost additives. This can be particularly helpful to women who are unable to visit markets to sell their products or buy inputs due to lack of transport or family reasons. In such cases, the LSP buys the inputs in bulk at a reduced price to sell to individuals, making a small profit margin.  

Madagascar’s number one learning from Tanzania was about LSPs. Although we had discussed the concept on several occasions, how it could work in the Mirieka context only became clear to Christelle after meeting LSPs in Tanzania. Since then, she has identified 20 motivated individuals and contracted suitable trainers to build their capacities in market systems development and specific techniques relevant to their proposed business. Examples include producers of patchouli, coffee, biopesticides and quality seed. Unfortunately, making a business out of a tree nursery, as Cherry Mumwi has done, is unlikely to work in the Mirieka area due to the proliferation of government and NGO-funded nurseries offering free seedlings. Rabbits are also unlikely to feature in any ventures since there is no local culture of consuming their meat. However, chickens and ducks are widely reared and, if managed appropriately, their dung can also serve to enrich compost. The point is not to copy activities, but to adapt the LSP concept to the Madagascan context.

Sophie Arizy is one of the individuals who is keen to become an LSP. Agricultural production is her passion, and she is already a locally well-known paysanne relais and nursery owner (mainly of coffee plants). “The only thing I do is [agricultural] production, and showing others how to produce more,” says Sophie. For those interested, she suggests better models of production, sorting and packaging methods, and supports them in improving their practices. Thanks to her experience, her ability to mobilize quickly, and her clear vision, she is well placed to play a leading role in local value chains, especially coffee and patchouli. Considering the market potential, she plans to invest in a storage facility. “There’s always a market for coffee,” she says. “It’s just that the price varies from year to year.”

Rija Razakamampionona, the Market Systems Development Specialist for Helvetas’ Madagascar country program, also participated in the Tanzania visit. “It was impressive to see the dynamism of the LSPs in Tanzania, offering, for example, biopesticides and biofertilizers tailored to local agricultural needs. Their activities are grounded in the available natural resources and fueled by strong community involvement,” he says. “When I compare the situation in Madagascar — especially within the intervention areas of the Miriaka project — I see significant opportunities: exceptional biodiversity, plant species with pesticidal properties, and abundant organic materials ideal for producing biological inputs. This is a diverse and promising foundation on which we can build when developing LSP models.”

Land tenure

Christelle and I were both also struck by a conversation we had with an older Tanzanian woman, Regina Mazinge. She recounted her difficulties following an acrimonious separation from her husband, and how gaining a Certificate of Customary Right of Occupancy (CCRO) had made all the difference to her life.

Regina is one of over 1,700 women supported by Ukijani in gaining security over land tenure.  But achieving this in Madagascar, where the law is more complicated, will not be easy. However, the fact that such security can change women’s lives so significantly has given Christelle renewed determination to try.

Village Savings and Loan Associations

In Madagascar, the equivalent of Village Savings and Loan Associations (VSLAs) are Groupes de Crédit et Epargne (GECs). They function in a similar way regarding savings goals. Under Ukijani, many groups are becoming digitalized, uploading their savings onto a digital platform from which they also access credit. The software program used was developed by the international NGO CARE and is called Chomoka. At least one member of the group needs a smartphone for the software (provided through the project), but the other members can access it using a basic mobile phone.

This was the innovation that highlighted a big difference between Ukijani and Mirieka. Ukijani operates in areas with generally good network coverage, and the system of mobile phone payment is very well developed in Tanzania. Almost all VSLA members are familiar with sending and receiving money via mobile phone and regularly do so.

The same cannot be said of the remote rural areas of Madagascar covered by the Mirieka project, where network coverage is variable and many women do not possess a phone. Yet technological developments sometimes move fast, and to be aware of what could be possible in the future allows a rapid response when the opportunity arises.

With her visit to Madagascar approaching, Shoma has been reflecting on the potential learning opportunities. She is particularly looking forward, she says, to exploring models of collaboration with private sector actors in the vanilla and coffee value chains. She hopes to replicate in Tanzania the most promising approaches, focusing on the cotton and sunflower industries, in a manner that supports local ownership.

Exchange visits between Helvetas projects are nothing new, but what makes the Ukijani/Mirieka example especially interesting is the way the two projects were designed from the start to foster mutual learning across contextual and linguistic differences. There is an expectation that this learning will be proactively incorporated into activities, such as the introduction of the LSP business model in Madagascar — thus benefiting the women concerned in both countries.

Helvetas is grateful to the Irene M. Staehelin Foundation for their financial support to the Ukijani and Mirieka projects.

About the Authors

Dr. Jane Carter is a Senior Advisor for Natural Resource Governance at Helvetas.

Christelle Soanirina is the Project Manager for the Mirieka project at Helvetas Madagascar.