What Does It Take to Build Competitive Horticulture Businesses at Scale? Lessons from Tanzania
Between 2020 and 2024, Rikolto implemented the Building Inclusive and Competitive Horticulture Businesses (BICHOBS) project in Tanzania’s Southern Highlands, as part of the EU’s €100m AGRI-CONNECT programme. Drawing on the iCRA Agribusiness Cluster approach alongside SCOPEinsight assessments, multi-stakeholder platforms, and matching grants, the project supported 104 production clusters and connected nearly 28,400 farmers to markets, finance, and business development services.
AMEA’s Learning into Action case study evaluates the results and extracts lessons for National BDS Roadmap processes and future agri-SME investment.
Key Points
- Farmer organisation (FBO) governance is the make-or-break factor. Clusters anchored by strong, transparent FBOs outperformed those with weak leadership on every measure, from market access to finance readiness.
- Structured contracts create real returns. Twenty-six contracts were established, with avocado farmers seeing a 48% increase in sales margins.
- Women’s membership in cooperatives rose from 32% to 41%, exceeding the 40% target, but women held only 14% of leadership positions, pointing to the need for deeper gender investment.
- Cluster coaches are a viable, low-cost BDS delivery channel, but quality assurance mechanisms are needed to manage the risk of biased advice when coaches are also input suppliers.
- Youth entrepreneurship support through the Generation Food Accelerator produced results, with 82 enterprises supported and a 35% average revenue increase, but post-incubation support remains a critical gap.
- The project generated evidence with direct relevance to Tanzania’s national BDS Roadmap, with recommendations to benchmark future BDS providers against national guidelines.