Project description / objective
To increase income and employment opportunities of female and male smallholder farmers, youth and MSMEs in northern Mozambique through their engagement in resilient market systems.
PROMAS will achieve this by building strong supporting market systems, stimulating improved relationships by market actors within the value chains, and facilitating a conducive enabling and regulatory environment. It will introduce climate smart and agroecology practices to help reduce long term risk for the SHF and increase their resilience.
Market systems focus
Improved access to finance
PROMAS will enhance farmers' yields and overall production by encouraging savings for seeds and improving access to suitable inputs that boost climate resilience and sustainability. It will facilitate better access to extension services offered by input suppliers and distributors.
Output marketing
PROMAS will seek to consolidate the operationalisation of an efficient output marketing system which connects smallholder farmers to Commodity Aggregator Traders (CATs) and CATs to big buyers. It facilitate improved supply chain management among actors of the value chain, and facilitate improved transportation solutions.
Input Supply
Tying into the ‘Improved access to finance’ and ‘Output marketing’ market systems, PROMAS will strengthen the direct engagement of input suppliers (seed companies and crop protection product (CPP) manufacturers), input distributors, agro-retailers and village-based agents to sustainably meet the demand of smallholder farmers (SHF).
Climate Smart Agriculture
PROMAS will stimulate more dynamic market for SHF to access agro-ecologic and climate smart agricultural products to be more resilient and absorb climate change shocks. This includes increased SHF knowledge of climate change adaptation practices, as well as increasing the supply of climate smart products for the farmers and increasing access to insurance products.
Programme interventions
Improved access to finance
The PROMAS strategy is to use the Fundo Agricola (FA) as a key point of leverage to stimulate the transfer of knowledge, access to inputs, and increase productivity by smallholder farmers (SHF).
- Facilitate financial institutions and FinTechs to introduce agent banking and digital models to access the accumulating savings of the FA and increase SHF
- Facilitate the Commodity Aggregator Traders (CATs) to engage more directly with SHF to share market information on demand for different products and to help orient the input suppliers to promote the seeds of crops with highest demand
- Facilitate seed companies; input suppliers; irrigation and drying technology companies; and post-harvest conservation technology providers to enter established zones to promote their inputs through demonstrations on how to use products most appropriately, and especially reaching out to women and youth
- Recruit and train co-facilitators to train new FA groups in new districts, ensuring a good mix of female staff and animators
Output marketing
Accessing output markets is central to PROMAS’ goal of increasing smallholder farmer’s income and employment opportunities. PROMAS will collaborate with, and work through, several key partners to drive change and leverage points with which PROMAS will work to effect change.
- Facilitate increased linkages between CATs, SHF and large buyers; scale the fixed buying point model in new and old districts; and crowd in new CATs to the intervention.
- Facilitate commercial access by CATs to financial services and Business Development Services (BDS) to improve their operations
- Strengthen trader association management to enhance their efficiency
- Collaborate with government agencies to implement transaction cost reducing policies such as the Provincial Departments of Industry and Commerce to implement the Cadernetas de Comercializaçao
Input supply
- Facilitate the range of agricultural input suppliers to strengthen their sales through marketing efforts to SHF using demonstrations, farmer field days, and new distribution arrangements
- Support the Association for the Promotion of the Seed Sector (APROSE) to enhance its capacity to execute its mandates (promoting dialogue, lobbying, advocacy, coordination, communication, etc.) in a manner that will get more stakeholders willing to engage APROSE for seed related- implementation services (members’ training and awareness, dialogue, research, etc.)
- Facilitate the development of commercially driven service provision to input suppliers to enhance their management systems and profitability
Climate Smart Agriculture
SHF in Northern Mozambique have experienced several other shocks in the last five years. COVID-19 affected their production and access to markets, leading to loss of assets.
- Facilitate seed companies to promote their seeds alongside promoting of practices that help conservation of soil and water, nitrogen fixing and other important practices
- Facilitate local suppliers of organic fertilizers and bio pesticides to build their markets and expand organic pest management practices to produce more hygienic crops
- Facilitate development of a crop insurance market for SHF
Notable results (systemic change, poverty impact)
These will be added in due course.
[Uploaded March 2024]