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Editors
Bryan Callahan
Dick Day

Sweetening the Earnings Potential of Tanzania’s Cane Growers

Over the past four years, the production of sugar for international and regional markets has expanded rapidly in southeastern Tanzania’s Morogoro Region. The Kilombero Sugar Company, a subsidiary of the South Africa-based Illovo Group of companies, has purchased the region’s large state-owned sugar processing plant and made considerable investments in its rehabilitation. This event has boosted local demand for raw sugar cane while providing thousands of independent cane growers with new opportunities to expand their sales and personal incomes.

Yet many Morogoro farmers lack the necessary capital, technology, and training to take advantage of the improving market. Low capitalization hinders the rehabilitation of older farms and the purchase of tools, fertilizers, and high-quality seed cane. Inadequate loading services prevent farmers from harvesting and delivering their cane when its sugar content peaks. Poor cane husbandry methods significantly reduce average yields per hectare, and feeder roads and drainage systems that decayed due to a decline in state investment in the sugar industry in the 1970s and 1980s pose additional obstacles to effective transportation and land use.

Independent farmers across the region split their production between growing staple grains and vegetables and cultivating sugar to generate cash earnings, and most of these farmers earn significantly less than Tanzania's per capita income (US $236 vs. US $600).

ADF will help the Kilombero Cane Growers Association (KCGA), a 1,600-member association of smallholders, increase the quantity and quality of their output by:

• Financing a revolving loan fund to support improved land-preparation methods and the introduction of more appropriate fertilizers and herbicides;
   
• Providing KCGA with funds to purchase a diesel-fueled cane loader capable of transporting nearly 200,000 tons of raw cane from field to factory every year;
   
• Providing KCGA with funds to purchase of a four-wheel drive vehicle that will deliver fuel to the cane loader at remote field locations;
   
• Underwriting the training of a select number of KCGA staff in business management and financial accounting practices; and
   
• Supporting the training of nearly 600 cooperative members in sugar cane husbandry and strategies for preventing HIV/AIDS and mitigating its social and economic impact in local communities.
  
  
  Photo by Clark Arrington

The overall goal of the KCGA Project is to increase the members’ average annual incomes by nearly four hundred percent over five years by increasing average sugar production per member from 400 tons to 3,200 tons. The success of the project will allow KCGA’s members to achieve annual incomes of close to US $1,000 that will be 50 percent higher than the national average.

The project will be implemented with technical assistance, training, and participatory evaluation support provided by ADF's Tanzania partner organization, the Centre for Sustainable Development Initiatives (CSDI).

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