Tanzania enters bilateral partnership for startups

Tanzania has entered into a bilateral partnership with South Africa worth Sh300 million that aims to help startups to develop their innovations and come up with solutions that help their communities.

 Joseph Mwanika from Tanzania is among the startups who is a business development manager at Farm Box that helps farmers to store their crops and access markets without losing their produce.

Statistics show that 40 percent of farm produces is lost in the farm.

However, explaining he said the initiative that was started in 2018 has so far supported 200 farmers.

He said farmers lose their produce because they do not have storage facilities and markets.

"This time we have come to close that gap Farm box is a web based platform where we teach farmers what produce to grow at a particular period to go with the market.

According to him, they have a storage facility that is powered by solar to ensure the farm products are not spoiled while waiting for markets.

"We connect them to the market like restaurants and schools catering companies as well as families," he said.

He noted that they were currently in talks with Pakistan to export some of the products such as fruits vegetables and rice. Noting that they have a bidding platform to show the type of crops they have the quantity and cost.

However, he noted that the challenge was entering into agreements with farmers who usually ask for payment before the actual work.

Meanwhile, a South African innovater John Louw from Animal Farm.com said the created a platform where they collect data and introduce tracking applications and create a market place to market livestock produce including meat and milk.

"We believe that empowering the livestock community and strengthening the tools they use can enable them meet the African demand which has a potential to become the next exporter of livestock products," he said.

He added: Amount of money coming to Africa in 1980 was $60 billion while in 2010 was $200 billion and more if the animals were in good shape.

Farmers don’t have capabilities to keep up with the demand because they still use the old technologies.

However, he said they help farmers to keep track of their livestock and know which animals are doing well those that are sick or how they are growing up.

Explaining be said they collect data and do analytics so that the farmer can put weight of the animal on the application and the farmer can keep track of the animal health fertility when it's on heat to ensure they know what is going on when the animal is sick losing weight and so on.

He said they have come to Tanzania to create partnership with local agritec so that they can drive the technology and customize it to the needs of the locals.

Meanwhile, the Tanzania Commission for Science and Technology (Costech) director of center for development and transfer of technology, Gerald Kajuku said they have entered into  a bilateral partnership with South Africa to start an initiative known as Twiga Innovation Lab Project.

On another note, Twiga Innovation Lab project; Project Manager, from South Africa, Sina Legong said the project started in 2020 where the youth are required to show their projects and offer solutions.

"We connect them with possible investors to work on their projects and come up with solutions that help communities," he said.