Covid-19 Project

Project

COVID-19

In the Coastal Region of Tanzania, there are more than 20,000 small-scale women farmers depending on pineapple and cashew farming as a source of income. They sell their produce to local community consumers because there are very few industries using pineapples as raw materials to manufacture their final goods. The local market cannot absorb all the pineapples leading to plenty of unsold pineapples that cause wastage. This is the same to cashew apples as there is no commercial utilization in Tanzania. As a result, farmers are discouraged to produce more. For example, last year(2019) these women put so much effort physically and financially to invest on cultivation of high quality pineapples to be harvested from May to August 2020. Due to the COVID-19, they could not sell much because local consumers failed to procure the fruits as they are securing food stuff for their families. The situation is made worse by the fact that growers lack knowledge and capacity to add value to their produce

The trainers and trainees of wine making training program conducted at Ava Santiago Investment Building Centre Ubungo Dar Es salaam, Tanzania
The beneficiaries were peeling off the pineapples for making juice and wine the program was fully funded by the U.S department of State

Provision of Consistent Markets as Well as Training to 20 Pineapple and Cashew Apple Growers in Coastal Region, Tanzania Through Wine and Juice Production.

at Ava Group Investments (AGI) building, while maintaining 1-meter social distancing guideline due to the pandemic. The project entails the provision of sustainable markets and training on commercial value addition to 20 women smallscale pineapple and cashew growers in the Coastal Region of Tanzania..

Eco-Friendly

Being an eco-friendly project, the trainees were educated on the productive ways of handling processed wastes such as making animal feeds for local dairy farmers and compost manure for their own farms to reduce the cost of agricultural inputs.

Impact

The project imparted knowledge that provide alternative markets by commercially adding value to their harvests there by mitigating the risk of depending on only one market (raw fruits), promote micro enterprises and employment opportunities as a result contribute towards building the women micro economy and the national economy at large.

Fully funded by the US Department of States and Michigan State University, In January 2021.