SAGCOT supporting Agricultural Transformation in Ihemi Cluster

Iringa, Tanzania: The Agribusiness Leadership Meeting for Agricultural Transformation in

Ihemi Cluster was held in Iringa last week. This is a multi-stakeholder event aimed at
promoting the role that Public and Private Sector leadership play in facilitating agricultural
transformation in the Ihemi cluster.
Improvement of performance of the agricultural sector has always been critical in achieving
economic growth and poverty reduction in Tanzania. Various agricultural development
initiatives have been launched in response to the pressing need to raise agricultural
productivity in Tanzania. The Southern Agriculture Growth Corridor of Tanzania (SAGCOT)
partnership is one of those initiatives aimed at transforming agriculture in Tanzanias
Southern Corridor.
The general objective of this meeting is to enhance networking and collaborations
between various agricultural stakeholders from public and private in the corridor to
influence, align and outline priority actions with regards to policy and regulatory issues; tax
and land challenges that negatively affects SAGCOT partners in Ihemi cluster, said the CEO
of Uongozi Institute Prof. Joseph Semboja.
According to the CEO of SAGCOT Mr. Geoffrey Kirenga, Through inclusive private sector led
investments, the Partnership targets to enhance food security in Tanzania in such a way that
environmental resources are sustained and smallholder farmers and their communities have
access to sustainable livelihood development. Due to the fact that, SAGCOT partners are
coming from different backgrounds with diverse interest and approaches in investment,
there is a need of having a common understanding on SAGCOT especially among leaders of
institution that directly engages in agriculture sector within Ihemi cluster, said Mr. Kirenga
In early July 2014, the technical team from Uongozi institute, SCL and the academicians from
the Columbia University met in Dar es Salaam and convened a meeting that deliberately
discussed collaboration opportunities to foster agricultural development in SAGCOT
corridor. The subsequent meetings came with an agreement to establish regular
agribusiness leadership seminars in the corridor.
Agricultural transformation can only happen under the environment with prompt solutions
to investment bottlenecks. Not limited to but among them being policy, legal issues and
weaknesses on the institutional set ups. As a result these always lead to specific challenges
like inefficient power supply, poor infrastructures, efficiencies of product standard

management, bureaucracies and market challenges, to mention but a few, said the
representative from SAGCOT Mr. Kirenga.
Basing on the selection criteria that led to select Ihemi cluster as a priority, the expectation
was to see a well coordinated agribusiness, efficient input supply and high productivity that
makes Ihemi Cluster a centre of agro processing industries. The findings from SAGCOT
survey of September 2014 showed slow progress of the implementation of the initiatives in
the corridor mainly as a result of some challenges which among others included unreliable
power supply to processing plants; tax relief for import of processing machines and farm
building materials; policy constraints and land related issues.
Apparently there seem not to be a clear coordinating mechanism among the various
stakeholders and as a result the roles and responsibilities of stakeholders are not articulated
as required. The agribusiness leaders workshop is considered one of the important
interventions that can address the identified problems. The scheduled workshop is
therefore expected to inform and remind all stakeholders their roles to address the ongoing
agribusiness constraints in Ihemi cluster.
Therefore SAGCOT Centre and Uongozi Institute have initiated to facilitate the agribusiness
leadership workshop to empower leaders within the Ihemi cluster. The successes of this
intervention are expected to trigger other leaders in the whole SAGCOT corridor to inform
and lead their organizations/departments in a more innovative ways through an efficient
and effective Public Private Partnership in the agricultural development plans.

Background Information
About SAGCOT: The Southern Agricultural Growth Corridor of Tanzania (SAGCOT) is an
inclusive, multi-stakeholder partnership to rapidly develop the regions agricultural potential.
SAGCOT was initiated at the World Economic Forum (WEF) Africa summit 2010 with the
support of founding partners including farmers, agri-business, the Government of Tanzania
and companies from across the private sector.
SAGCOTs objective is to foster inclusive, commercially successful agribusinesses that will
benefit the regions small-scale farmers, and in so doing, improve food security, reduce rural
poverty and ensure environmental sustainability. The risk-sharing model of a public-private
partnership (PPP) approach has been demonstrated to be successful in achieving these
goals and SAGCOT marks the first PPP of such a scale in Tanzanias agricultural history.
For more information visit: http://www.sagcot.com/