Featured Work > Mozambique

Poultry Promotes Prosperity in Mozambique

TechnoServe works across a value chain to help create and support a thriving domestic poultry industry, transforming the lives of thousands of farmers. 

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Featured Work > Mozambique

Revitalizing an Island Gem

TechnoServe helps a historic Mozambican island develop a tourism industry plan to bring much-needed jobs and business opportunities for local residents.

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Program Descriptions

Promoting Agro-Forestry Villages
A competitive and environmentally sustainable plantation forestry sector will generate a substantial amount of new employment in rural areas, drive continued expansion of the grain and livestock industries and help to ensure that new investments in the poultry industry are initiated in areas with high potential for low-cost feed grain production to achieve maximum poultry industry competitiveness. Over the next three years, 5,600 jobs are projected in the forestry, poultry and grain-processing industry and 10,800 subsistence family plots will be transformed into commercially-oriented farms. In total, the Agro-Forestry Village Project aims to break the cycle of poverty for roughly 60,000 workers, farmers and their family members. Moreover, by 2050, around 7.4 million acres of Northern and Central Mozambique will be home to globally competitive clusters of forest plantations, forest conservation areas, smallholder grain and livestock farms, and processing companies, employing 300,000 people in the forestry sector and purchasing feed grains and oilseed from 300,000 small family farms. The program will be funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture through 2013.

Developing a Soy Value Chain
Within 10 years, the incomes of 200,000 smallholder households in Southern Africa will have significantly increased through the development of a competitive local soy industry. Funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and led by TechnoServe in partnership with private agribusiness partners, CLUSA Mozambique, and local farmer organizations, the project aims to provide extension services support to small farmers and promote seed production in order to supply needed inputs. The project also will operate in Zambia through a partnership with Cargill Zambia and ZARI/AGRA. To achieve its vision of success, TechnoServe has designed a scalable value chain intervention with the four-year goal of increasing the annual incomes of 37,000 small farm families in Mozambique (30,000) and Zambia (7,000) by an average of $200.  These countries share a promising market outlook for soy, but are at different stages of industry development, thereby creating an opportunity to develop a diverse experienced-based program. In Mozambique, soy is a relatively new crop and the domestic poultry industry imports the majority (around 70 percent) of its soy cake, so the focus is on building a robust domestic production base to meet the burgeoning demand from the poultry sector. In order to manage the transition from importation to domestic production and processing, the program will support growth and investment across the value chain and will directly facilitate the development of structured market linkages between producers and the poultry industry.

Transforming an Agricultural Sector through Horticulture
TechnoServe has engaged with Irish Aid to transform Inhambane province’s agricultural sector by consolidating the cashew industry, deepening the production of MD2 pineapple and piri-piri chili and supporting the development of value-added coconut processing. In part due to this partnership, TNS is now working with 7,500 small-scale coconut farmers to increase their incomes by selling the husk and shell portion of the coconut (previously only the white center was considered useful). Since more than 800,000 Mozambican families grow coconuts, as the industry develops, the number of farmers that will benefit can grow significantly. With the assistance of our key donors, Irish Aid and the U.S. Agency for International Development, we are helping Mozambique position itself as a leading high-quality fruit producer. We help entrepreneurs develop business plans, raise capital, and improve their production so that their farms develop a reputation for quality. We link growers to commercial enterprises and export markets. For example, we are helping banana growers to potentially increase their incomes by connecting them to the world's largest fruit company.

Promoting Rural Tourism
In 2003, with support from the Ford Foundation, we began identifying opportunities in the tourism sector. Our tourism industry strategic plan was developed by a pro-bono McKinsey & Company team. They identified eco-tourism as the segment in which there is significant growth potential and where TechnoServe’s expertise could add the most value.  More specifically, eco-tourism enables us to have an impact on isolated rural communities, which might not otherwise have access to employment or business opportunities.  Our approach is based on working with a cluster of eco-tourism lodges which show that eco-tourism, if practiced in a responsible way, can bring many types of benefits to the rural poor. The aim is for these lodges to set high standards of responsible tourism and to show the way in terms of using tourism for powerful forms of rural development. As a first step, we undertook an assessment of those eco-tourism opportunities (current or potential) that would offer the highest projected impact for the rural poor in order to guide the development of this sector. Impact is measured by the number of jobs created (combined with appropriate training), breadth of new spin-off businesses to support the eco-tourism operator (e.g., guides, crafts, transport, agriculture services), and potential for profit-sharing within the community.

Enabling Investments in Mozambique
Capital raising and financial advisory services are deemed essential to the development of the agribusiness sector given the difficulties encountered in attracting low-cost capital for investments in Mozambique, as well as foreign investors who lack knowledge about the country’s full legal compliance requirements. Our individually tailored technical assistance includes: business plan development, where we assist with the drafting of a comprehensive business plan and the building of a detailed financial model; introduction to appropriate financiers (debt and equity investors); assistance with negotiations; diagnostics of capital raising needs; advice on optimal balance sheet structure; and development of cash projection models. Large-scale agriculture projects require significant amounts of land, and overlaps with areas used by local communities are typically inevitable. Engaging communities from the outset by conducting the land consultation process in a responsible way, and interacting with communities post-investment on a continuous basis are key to the commercial success of a large-scale agricultural venture. TechnoServe has a dedicated team in place to assist investors and communities with the land consultation processes.