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Innovation for Agribusiness (INOVAGRO) Private Sector-Led Rural Growth in Northern Mozambique

Innovation for Agribusiness (INOVAGRO) Private Sector-Led Rural Growth in Northern Mozambique

Innovation for Agribusiness (INOVAGRO)
Private Sector-Led Rural Growth in Northern Mozambique

Formal commercial actors are needed to sustain and expand agricultural value chains. Poor farmers, either individually or within groups, cannot effectively penetrate international and formal markets without the formal intermediaries involved in quality management, bulking, and export. Under the right conditions, these formal commercial actors can expand their businesses in ways that generate employment and market opportunities for poor communities and farming households. This project is working to help them do that. Based on the principles of “making markets work for the poor” (M4P), the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation is reducing poverty in northern Mozambique by promoting private sector development and increasing the economic involvement of the poor in select agricultural value chains. The project mandate is to work in the northern provinces of Mozambique, which despite having the greatest agricultural opportunities, have been hardest hit by rural poverty.

Sample Activities

  • Identify value chains in which the private sector provides avenues for smallholder participation, such as poultry, soybean, sesame, and pulses.
  • Facilitate ways for private-sector partners to improve the viability of their supply chains and build linkages to small-scale outgrowers and business development services.

Select Results

  • Working in partnership with one of Mozambique’s largest intergrated poultry operations, called GETT Limitada, Inovagro facilitated the structuring of relationships between GETT and small and emerging farmers in Gurue district of Zambezia province, including the development of an extension services program managed by GETT.
  • In the 2011/2012 planting season more than 1,285 hectares were sown with certified seed, by 844 farmers (25 percent women-owned and managed farms) and commercial financing worth $160,000 was provided for inputs and labour. These farmers have pre-season supply contracts with GETT and could see revenues of around $1.1 million from sales of soya beans in 2012.
  • Working with local and regional research institutions, Inovagro facilitated the multiplication of new vairietes of soya bean seed, which will see close to 175 tons of cheaper certified seed available for small farmers in the 2012/2013 season.