Agricultural Markets Development Trust 2016-2025 Agricultural Markets Development Trust 2016-2025 AMDT’s primary impact goal is to increase and sustain incomes and employment opportunities for poor women, men and young people in agricultural markets in Tanzania. The outcome goal is to enable the target group to take advantage of more inclusive, resilient and competitive market systems. During the five year period (2016-2021), AMDT’s interventions will target 500,000 poor women, men and youth involved in smallholder agricultural production and in other agricultural on-farm and off-farm economic activities (trading, services, supply) as employees earning a wage or self-employed in agricultural MSMEs. 

To deliver its strategy, AMDT adopts a market systems approach (M4P), working through private and public stakeholders to address identified system constraints and introduce changes to agricultural market systems that have a high potential to benefit those living in poverty.

AMDT’s interventions focus on three value chains – sunflower, maize and pulses. AMDT’s primära mål är att öka samt upprätthålla inkomster och arbetstillfällen för fattiga kvinnor, män och ungdomar inom Tanzanias jordbrukssektor. Resultatmålet är att göra det möjligt för målgruppen att dra nytta av ett mer inkluderande, flexibelt och konkurrenskraftigt marknadssystem. Under femårsperioden 2016-2021 förväntas AMDT’s åtgärder att nå 500 000 fattiga kvinnor, män och ungdomar som deltar i småskalig jordbruksproduktion och i andra jordbruksrelaterade aktiviteter (handel, tjänster, leveranser) som löntagare eller egenföretagare i MSMEs.

AMDT har en marknadsbaserad strategi (M4P), genom vilken privata och offentliga aktörer får stöd med att hantera identifierade systembegränsningar och genomföra förändringar inom jordbruksektorn som har en hög potential att gynna de som lever i fattigdom.

AMDT’s insatser kommer att fokusera på tre värdekedjor - solros, majs och baljväxter. The Governments of Sweden, Denmark, Switzerland, and Ireland  through their bilateral development cooperation in Tanzania came together and established the Agricultural Markets Development Trust (AMDT) in 2014.  The Trust was set up as a long-term independent facility facilitating public and private market actors to respond to barriers in selected agricultural Value Chains (VCs). The primary goal is to increase and sustain the incomes of poor through empoyment  opportunities in agricultural value chains in Tanzania. The outcome goal is to enable the target groups to take advantage of more inclusive, resilient, and competitive market systems.
 AMDTs intervention logic starts from the premise that commercially incentivized market systems are one of the vital pathways to more sustainable and resilient approach in fighting against income (RESOURCES) and other dimensions of poverty. This is even more important for the poor rural based population, dependent on agriculture for their livelihood. Therefore, systemic change is required to allow the poor to sustainably gain from participating in the markets. This is based on approaches of making the markets (in agrarian dominated economy such as Tanzanian) to work for the poor (M4P). AMDT is considered as a facilitator for M4P -a systemic development approach. It works through other institutions, considered as Market Facilitators. The facilitators works with stakeholders to identify systemic constraints in particular value chains, prioritise/rank them and devise commercially/market driven solutions. In turn, the Market Facilitator identifies the ideal Market Actors (normally private sector enterprises, government agency, or producer organizations such as cooperatives etc.) to intervene in changing the systems. The approach promises greater efficiency as market actors have a lasting commercial interests and can provide sustainable solutions. For example, the market for edible oil in Tanzania, AMDT has selected interventions in sunflower value chain: the demand is very high locally and in export markets. Several market constraints are identified and prioritized for which AMDTs M4P model is working on the market/commercially motivated solutions from various market actors (business enterprises and farmers). From the on-farm sunflower production, the constraints have been in improved seeds, mechanization and extension services while on post-harvest markets section of the value chain, aggregation and linkage logistics with the processors has been facing the challenges including disorganization.

Through its interventions, AMDT aims to deliver five key outputs: 
1. Inclusive business models which address systemic constraints while exploiting pro-poor growth opportunities. 
2. Innovative pro-poor productive assets and services targeting constraints of a large majority of the poor. 
3. Improve coordination, knowledge, and practice of inclusive markets development through M4P approaches in agricultural markets in Tanzania. 
4. Enhance capacity for evidence-based dialogue and advocacy targeting inclusive business reforms. Increase availability and adoption of new or improved climate smart technologies and practices specifically targeting constraints faced by agricultural enterprise of the productive poor.