SUGECO’s programs consist of training in entrepreneurship, business ecosystem and network development
Kick starting business start-up support through internships and business incubation services
Linking youth to get access to capital, land, technology, market access and expert resources
The Sokoine University Graduate Entrepreneurs Cooperative (SUGECO) is a registered cooperative established in July 2011 by a group of students and academic staff from the Department of Agricultural Economics and Agribusiness (DAEA) at the Sokoine University of Agriculture. With currently over 1000 members throughout Tanzania, SUGECO engages in various agribusiness entrepreneurial activities such as provision of training in entrepreneurship, business ecosystem, and network development, providing business incubation services and access to capital, land, and technology, and arranging start-up support through internships, among others.
The main goal of SUGECO is to make a difference in the minds of the youth, communities, and graduates from higher learning institutions in support of enterprise development for self-employment, agribusiness development, job creation, community development, and economic prosperity.
Project Name: The Implementation
of UNDP Empowerment activities for the Kigoma Joint Programme (KJPII)
Client: United Nations Development Program (UNDP) Tanzania
Implementer: Sokoine University Graduates Entrepreneurs Cooperative (SUGECO).
Beneficiaries: The initiative will work with 400 beneficiaries, in phase one (October – December) 60% of whom will be women. 4,000 will have access to direct support and are envisaged to employ four youths, each of whom will engage in planting, weeding, harvesting, grading, and value addition. Indirect beneficiaries also include drivers and food vendors making a total of 1,600 beneficiaries.
Timeline: October – December 2023
Location: Kasulu and Kibondo District Councils, Kigoma.
Category: Capacity building
Project Overview
Women and youths in the Kigoma Region (Kasulu and Kibondo Districts) are economically disadvantaged due to discrimination at multiple levels, including employment, heritage, leadership, and the law. In addition to their traditional responsibilities, women perform the majority of agricultural work; however, their share of the economic benefits from this labor is minimal. Education and partnerships with women's and youth organizations, cooperatives, and groups are suggested as methods for increasing women's awareness of their economic and social rights and privileges. SUGECO's plans to partner with UNDP to offer technical backstopping on farming (Good Agricultural Practices-GAP), business and entrepreneurship skills training, and leadership development are specifically designed to enhance women's and youth empowerment through targeted skills training, access to business, marketing, and supportive access to productive resources, and self-employment in high-value, productive agribusinesses value chain. These organizational strategies, in collaboration with other regional stakeholders, are crucial measures toward the empowerment and freedom of women and youth.
Project Objective
To support UNDP effort to empower youth and women economically. In alignment with UNDP core values of empowerment, inclusion, and engagement, SUGECO will focus on two key components for the proposed intervention to effectively engage and empower youth and women,
1. Economic participation – offering farming technical skills, building life skills, financial literacy, and business development skills to increase their employment and entrepreneurship potential in agricultural and agribusiness value chain activities; and
2. Leadership – strengthening their ability to serve in leadership roles in their communities and local government. It is anticipated that the proposed economic and leadership activities will build the confidence, knowledge, and skills of women resulting in their increased participation in agribusiness ventures and engagement in local government elections (October 2024) as voters, and as possible Village Council leadership contestants.
Project Activities and Implementation
SUGECO will reach out to four Agricultural Marketing Cooperative Society (AMCOS) totaling over 120 individuals that will be dedicated to the most vulnerable age group. A positive youth development approach will be used to adapt all aspects of the program, with an emphasis on cultivating life skills for healthy living, as well as offering leadership, business, and entrepreneurship skills training geared toward youth and women. Lessons learned from the UNDP-sponsored KJPI will be used to expand networking and collaboration opportunities to build capacity for this new youth initiative.
The proposed women’s empowerment and skills training model will include:
1. Basic Agribusiness Skills and Entrepreneurship Training (up to 14 days)-- train unemployed women and youth from poor and disadvantaged backgrounds living in rural communities, the majority of whom are standard seven and secondary school leavers or dropouts who failed to proceed with school as a special group of youth out of school out of jobs.
2. Advanced Leadership Skills Training (up to 5 days) –interactive leadership skills training designed to cultivate confidence, and life skills for healthy living, with an emphasis on nutrition, healthy families, and an awareness of women’s rights and gender equality about accessing health care, water, nutrition, education, land ownership, and credit.
3. Business Mentorship and Coaching/Consulting Services – offer expert agribusiness development consultation and support for program participants integrated into the Basic Training, drawing on SUGECO’s resource people from their Fact-Based Advocacy and Business Information Services and the Youth Entrepreneurs Incubator Program; and
4. Emerging Best Practices Panel– create a panel of program graduates, business faculty, industry leaders, and policy and research advocates (profiling successful business women and community leaders), who will be invited to share their knowledge, networking connections, and evidence-based best practice experiences to cultivate business development skills, as part of the Advanced Leadership Development Training.
Youth Economic Empowerment through Agribusiness Project in Tanga City is an initiative coordinated by the Economic and Social Research Foundation (ESRF) with financial support from Botnar Foundation and Innovex as a fund manager and implemented by SUGECO and other Partners.
The initiative intends to improve the productivity and competitiveness of smallholder horticultural producers as important aspects of poverty reduction. The project aims to establish the Agribusiness Incubation Center where youth (incubates) will be capacitated on innovative ways of doing agriculture and using technology in agriculture. The project will support and facilitate the establishment of agricultural startup projects for youth in Tanga City through special training and practical programming aiming at providing more experience to these young entrepreneurs. The center will also act as a demonstration site for urban farming where farmers come and learn innovative agricultural techniques, especially in areas with limited land and water resources.
The project will focus on empowering youth farmers to own and manage their schemes and improve productivity. The project will also support the construction of greenhouses which will be provided to youth to grow their plants at the Masiwani agricultural incubation center. Irrigation systems that will be installed will enable youth farmers to produce crops even in the dry season when prices are high and farmers suffer from food- insecurity. The project will also focus on improved production, post-harvest handling technologies, market accessibility, financial services, and capacity building.
Sustainable employment for Urban and semi-Urban youth from Tanga City will be created through active engagement in agribusiness for wealth creation and poverty reduction. This project is expected to facilitate the growth of youth-led enterprises through collaboration with innovative financial service providers, creating market linkages, integrating innovatively digital technologies, and enhancing business management capacity. The project will link the selected horticultural crops to be grown under irrigation to market opportunities. Such crops will include green pepper, red pepper, yellow pepper, onions, cabbage, tomato, French beans, maize, chilies, okra, snow peas, and bananas (which have a higher potential of being locally traded and higher demand internationally).
Implemented by SUGECO, the Vocational Skills Development (VSD) project involves training youth aged 15-24 and young mothers Agri related VSD short courses. It is a project funded by Swiss Contact under the Skills for Employability (SET) project. Specifically, the VSD will be implemented at SUGECO Training Center in Morogoro Municipal and Njiwa Juu, Njiwa Kati, and Itete villages in the Itete Ward in Malinyi District. The VSD will be delivered in form of courses which are medium courses of at least 2 months to long training courses of up to 6 months depending on the respective Agri-related crop cycle. The targeted number of trainees under the implementation for this training is three hundred (300 (120 young men-40% and 180 women- 60%),) trainees that will be trained on the different short courses. The emphasis of the short course will be on technical skills that can facilitate self-employability and supported by soft and business skills and post-training services to enhance income generation and employability results.
Objective 1: To enhance employment opportunities for youth (young men-40% and women- 60%), and young mothers-50% aged between 15-24 years through improving vocational skills development (VSD) in Tanzania.
Objective 2:To provide skills that will enable youth to gain the knowledge, abilities, values, and attitudes needed to practice the green economy for a sustainable and resource-efficient society.
EXPECTED RESULTS.
Vocational Skills Development (VSD) training expectation:
• 300 youth will be trained and increased their awareness and skills in the commercial production, post-harvest handling, value addition, and marketing of crops in the selected value chains
• 200 youths adopted modern production techniques for selected crop value chains.
• 40% of the trained youth self-employed in the selected value chains
• 60% of trained youth are employed in the selected agriculture value chains
• Over 75% of the trained youth qualify for increased income
ACTIVITIES
• The purpose is to address the skills gap between unemployed and vulnerable employed youth and employment/self-employability requirements in Morogoro Region.
• The VSD training will focus on imparting skills in the agricultural sector and its related value chains which are demand driven within and outside of the project region.
• SUGECO will provide skills that will enable youth to gain the knowledge, abilities, values, and attitudes needed to practice the green economy for a sustainable and resource-efficient society.
• SUGECO will provide a blend of technical hands-on skills and soft skills that will enable youth to gain employment opportunities, and business skills that will increase chances for self-employment, and improve their income status.
On February 2023, SUGECO conducted training focused on agribusiness skills, mentorship, coaching, and entrepreneurship for 200 youth farmers in the Southern Highlands Region. The training was funded by Helvetas-Tanzania under the KIBOWAVI project, a project that targets youth in providing skills and knowledge to help them respond to the market needs.
SUGECO provided hands-on training where the participants were equipped with skills in modern farming using Agricultural technologies like the installation of drip irrigation systems, seed sowing using trays as well as Good Agricultural Practices (GAP) such as land preparation, nursery preparation and management, application of fertilizer, integrated pest management and identification of soil diseases before planting/transplanting any crop in the farm. They were also taken through the benefits of using screen houses in farming as well as solar dryer technology that is used to add value to horticultural crops and helps to reduce food loss.
The training was delivered by the use of a training rationing delivery approach where the trainee receives 80% Hands-on practical and 20% theory in both technical and business training.
SUGECO EXPERIENCE
SUGECO has experience in providing Mentorship, Coaching, and entrepreneurship agribusiness skills training. Over the past 11 years, SUGECO has developed good experience in supporting and facilitating Vocational training to youth and women while collaborating with both local and international organizations, providing consultation services, and assisting training providers and community of practice facilitators to innovate and enhancing skills delivery using appropriate techniques and methodologies.
• From March 2019 to June 2019 SUGECO worked with International Labor Organization (ILO) to assess Skills Mismatch for youth employability.
• Participate in developing training manuals and train 1563 youths who are out of school and out of jobs in hands-on agribusiness especially on modern farming in horticultural production, Poultry farming, beekeeping, production of nutritious crops and processing of horticultural crops, etc. Also linking youth and women to access LGA’s 10% own revenue fund.
• From November 2018 to date, SUGECO worked with the Prime Minister’s Office, Ministry of Youth, Labor, Employment, and People with disabilities (PMO – YLED) to develop training manuals and facilitate training for Youth employability. The training focused on construction of screenhouse technology, installation of drip irrigation systems and production of horticultural crops using those technologies as well as in an open field.
• In 2020 SUGECO worked with Swiss contact under the Skills for Employability Project (SET Project) to develop and review training manuals and specific training modules on adult learning techniques and facilitation. SUGECO reviewed 5 modules and manuals for skills development in different agribusiness value chains
• From July 2018 to December 2020, SUGECO worked with Tanzania Education Authority (TEA) under Skills Development Fund (SDF) project to develop a training guide and train 148 youth on horticulture, beekeeping, and poultry farming. During the 24 months of the project, beneficiaries were trained on the basic tools of nursery establishment, beekeeping, and business skills
PROJECT LINK
The Sokoine University Graduate Entrepreneur Cooperative (SUGECO) in collaboration with the Tanzania Ministry of Livestock and Fisheries and the North-South Institute of Florida (NSI) recently evaluated the Poultry Value Chain and Markets in Tanzania.
This project was carried out in the regions of Dodoma, Dar es Salaam, Singida, Shinyanga, Tabora, Mtwara, Lindi, Mbeya, Iringa, Kilimanjaro, Arusha, Tanga, Mwanza, and Morogoro. The project was funded by the USDA Foreign Agricultural Service.
This study’s main objective is to provide up-to-date information about poultry and poultry products consumer preferences and behavior, market trends, and value addition/processing in Tanzania and to make recommendations on branding and promotion of consumption of poultry and poultry products to all poultry value-chain actors in Tanzania.
This poultry project started in October 2022 and will end up in July 2023 with the collaboration of SUGECO and its partners.
The first step in the whole process was the creation of various questionnaires between the NSI and SUGECO in order to localize the content to reflect what is actually on the ground in Tanzania and make sure the right questions were being asked with the aim of accurately capturing the data appropriately from the different stakeholders.
The next step was the collection of data using focus group discussions in Dar es Salaam with the dialogue between parties focusing on the evaluation of the Poultry Value chain and various poultry markets in Tanzania. The discussion included different groups in the poultry value chain such as egg breeders, broiler slaughtering, sellers in supermarkets, those involved in the transportation of poultry meats, eggs, and many others.
Also, stakeholders from Tanzania Revenue Authority (TRA) were present and they managed to participate and contribute to the different discussions.
In the discussion, were stakeholders from the United States specifically from the North-South Institute whose aim was to ascertain the situation of the poultry sector in Tanzania including its challenges, and to look at the best way of collaborating to improve the conditions for all the stakeholders.
The next step involved sending a group of enumerators out into the field to collect data on Poultry projects in various areas in Tanzania based on respondents like Feed Millers, Poultry Farmers, and households.
Lastly, SUGECO will come up with a report which will help to improve the Poultry industry in Tanzania.
The project targets youth and involves the construction and installation of 14 greenhouses in 14 Local Government authorities (LGAs).
The project has two parts:
-Training 20 youth on construction and installation of greenhouse in 14 District Councils in Ruvuma and Lindi Region. (280 trainees);
-Training youth on modern farming (horticultural production) using greenhouse technology involving 100 youth in 14 District Councils in Ruvuma and Lindi Region (1400 trainees)
SUGECO’s responsibility on the project was to conduct Training of Trainers (ToT) to youth who will train 1400 youth on construction and installation of greenhouse technology and farming techniques using greenhouse technology and in open field. In summary, the youth receive training on a wide variety of topics including greenhouse technology and installation and horticulture production, soil analysis and soil test, MINDSET change, leadership, ethics, and farming as a business.
PROJECT LINK
On February 2023, SUGECO awarded farming equipment and other necessary stuff to Youth beneficiaries of the.....
In January 2023, The Executive Director of the Sokoine University Graduate Entrepreneurs Cooperative (SUGECO) Mr. Revocatus.....
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