4,000 ENTREPRENEURS TRAINED IN BUSINESS SKILLS

 

Over 4,000 entrepreneurs in agriculture have been trained in basic business skills in the last four years.

The programme, covering three northern regions and Zanzibar, is a collaborative effort between Trias East Africa and the Tanzania Horticulture Association (Taha).

"They trained in the best practices to transform agricultural production into income generation", said Ms Lilian Makaye, a programme manager with the Arusha-based regional NGO.

The exercise was undertaken through the financial and technical support of Andreas Hermes Akademie (Aha),a German organization specializing in training of business trainers.

She was speaking during the end of one of the training stints for 24 trainers of trainers TOTs)  in the project covering Arusha, Manyara, Kilimanjaro and Zanzibar under implementation since 2017.

"TOTs are given the training skills and the small scale farmers the primary skills in managing their agriculture profitably to improve their livelihood", she said. 

Ms Magdalena Mhina,a monitoring, evaluation, accountability and learning coordinator with Taha said horticulture farmers are among those targeted in order to upscale their skills in entrepreneurship.

According to her, at least 1,000 of those trained were small scale farmers growing horticulture crops notably fruits, vegetables, spices,seeds, tubers, among others.

She lauded the German agency for impacting the needful skills on the farmers which exposed them to skills that can transform their subsistence agriculture to a reliable source of income.

Ms Barbara Pichler, Aha lead trainer and consultant, said her organization has funded the capacity building project through Trias while Taha is the implementor. 

She could not disclose the amount of money injected into the project.  World Vision Tanzania, a relief and development NGO supporting community projects across the country.

The German organization supports the development of farmers’ organisations in various African countries among them Tanzania,

Burkina Faso, Benin, Cote d'Ivoire, Ethiopia and Tunisia.

"Our focus is entrepreneurial and leadership training. We also focus on strengthening member-supported organisations such as farmers' associations, networks of young farmers and cooperatives", she said.