Agribusiness and entrepreneurship to ensure financial sustainability Overall goal 

To contribute to improved livelihood of smallholder producer farmers and poverty reduction through entrepreneurship and business skill development, establishment of sustainable income generation enterprises and marketing of agricultural produce.

Project  objectives:
The project is seeking to achieve the following strategic objectives:
a)	Facilitating entrepreneurship and business skills development at grass root levels towards improved livelihood of smallholder producers.
b)	Strengthening  MVIWATA at national , middle and local levels  through capacity building towards institutional and financial sustainability. 
c)	Consolidate experiences and interventions of rural tourism initiative in Kwalei and Kwekanga villages in Lushoto District. 

The project will help to contribute to (i) increased farmers’ capacities on agribusiness skills, especially, marketing and entrepreneurship development to ensure food and  income security, (ii) increased access to market for agro-produce and financial services through establishment of farmer controlled market systems and financial institutions, (iii) institutional development of  MVIWATA at National, middle and local levels. 

Approaches and methodology
To implement this project, MVIWATA will use residential and village based training programs; exchange visits and study tours; facilitate farmers’ forums at village, ward, district, regional and national levels; organise reflection meetings; and facilitate regular monitoring and evaluation events using the existing tools used by MVIWATA such as follow up forms, progress reports and other tools for activity and budget tracking. Exchange visits and study tours will be organized to give participating communities the opportunity to learn from other farmers and exchange ideas and experiences amongst networks. So far, such visits have proved to be very successful because they offer participants an opportunity for learning from their counterparts. 

For training programs, MVIWATA has already developed its own training materials on key topics such as leadership skills, group formation and strengthening, farmer networks and network management, rural micro-finance, entrepreneurship development, lobbying and advocacy, rural markets management, gender and HIV/AIDS. Rural tourism initiatives will be promoted as an economic activity that will contribute to future financial sustainability of the organization. In areas where MVIWATA may not have adequate expertise, outsourced services may be used. 

In each region, 20 promoters will be trained on group formation and strengthening, entrepreneurship skills and business development, initiation and strengthening of rural microfinance, agricultural production systems and any other aspects embedded within MVIWATA interventions. A total of 100 farmer promoters (60 men and 40 women) will be trained. A total of twenty wards (20); five in each region will benefits from the project whereby four promoters will be trained per ward with the aim to provide services to other farmers. Over four years, 55,000 smallholder farmers will benefit from the project whereby a total of 1,000 farmer groups of about 55 members each will be reached by the project. From the above highlights, each trained promoter shall have trained about 688 smallholders farmers by the end of the project.

The overall goal of the proposed project is to contribute to improving the livelihood of smallholder farmers and poverty reduction through development of viable agribusiness enterprises at grass roots in the project target groups. The underlying outputs will be achieved by strengthening MVIWATA middle level networks, local level networks and producer groups, building their technical capacity on production and by empowering them with knowledge and skills on marketing, agribusiness enterprise development, initiating and management of financial institutions, and lobbying and advocacy. To attain more significant results and impact from this project, the implementation of the project will concentrate on four geographical regions of Tanzania Mainland and one from Zanzibar namely Dodoma, Kilimanjaro, Morogoro, Shinyanga and Zanzibar. The five geographical regions have been selected based on MVIWATA experience and potentials for achieving great impact from the project. The project will be implemented over 4 years period and will benefit a total of 55,000 smallholder producer farmers (30,000 men and 25,000 women).

Enhancing household incomes through sustainable pineapple production practices and gender empowerment in Luwero District