Developing Entrepreneurs

Business plan competitions
TechnoServe is helping aspiring entrepreneurs to turn business ideas into viable business plans through Believe Begin Become, a national business plan competition. Thanks to training and networking (as well as seed capital for the winners), the participants will be better-equipped to create thriving small and medium companies that generate jobs and incomes across many sectors of the economy.
Key supporters: Google.org and other private, academic and governmental organizations

Building Businesses and Industries

Agriculture & Agribusiness › Artemisia
Malaria continues to be a scourge across large areas of Africa, causing the deaths of about a million people each year. The most effective treatment for the disease, ACTs (Artemisinin-based Combination Therapies, using an extract of the herb Artemisia), has traditionally been produced in Asia. TechnoServe determined that increasing ACT demand presented an opportunity for Africans to fight malaria while also enhancing their incomes: African enterprise helping to produce the solution to one of Africa's most pressing health problems. The initiative is helping 4,000 Tanzanian farmers to produce and market Artemisia crops and linking them to a regional extraction plant. Millions of doses of ACTs are being produced from their annual harvests.
Key supporters: World Health Organization (WHO), U.S. Agency for International Development, and the BetterWorld Together Foundation

Agriculture & Agribusiness › Cashew
TechnoServe is working with a range of partners – including global cashew industry leader Olam International Limited – to develop a competitive cashew industry in Tanzania. The program is organizing farmers into business groups, helping them produce more high-quality nuts and linking them to premium markets. The yields of the first 1,000 farmers organized into groups have already increased by more than one-third. Fiscal reforms have already allowed one cashew processing plant to reopen, preserving more than 1,000 jobs and a market for 14,000 small farmers.
Key supporters: U.S. Agency for International Development, Olam International Limited, Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (seco), International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD)

Agriculture & Agribusiness › Coffee
TechnoServe is helping smallholder coffee farmers to produce and sell more lucrative specialty coffee. We helped farmers organize themselves into business groups and to form an association, KILICAFE, whose close to 10,000 members benefit from economies of scale when buying supplies, obtaining credit, and processing and selling coffee using new, eco-friendly equipment. They are learning world-class farming and management techniques, qualifying for international certifications, and enjoying the fruits of a Technoserve-led effort to boost industry competitiveness. The latter led to key reforms that are putting an additional $1 million a year in farmers' pockets by enabling them to, among other things, sell directly to overseas buyers such as Starbucks and Peet's Coffee & Tea.
Key supporters: U.S. Agency for International Development, the Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (seco), the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation and private donors

Agriculture & Agribusiness › Horticulture
TechnoServe is leveraging its expertise from work in Kenya and Mozambique to strengthen the Tanzanian banana industry. Activities include organizing farmers into producer marketing groups, which enables them to sell their product at bulk collection centers for higher prices. We are also teaching them to grow better bananas and to run their businesses effectively, and linking them to credit and agricultural support services. As a result their income is on track to double within five years.
Key supporter: Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (seco)

Agriculture & Agribusiness › Tea
TechnoServe is helping 1,000 smallholder tea farmers to turn their main cash crop into a business, tripling their productivity and improving the quality of tea being produced. Farmers are organized into business groups so they can benefit from economies of scale when selling their products and buying supplies. The program is also helping farmers to acquire business financing and to register with Fair Trade, whose price premiums support community projects.
Key supporters: West Foundation and the U.S. Agency for International Development