Anglo Takura Agricultural Value Chains Program

The Takura Project, a Technoserve – Anglo-American collaboration, aims to create and support economic opportunities for communities within the zone of influence of the Unki mine in the Midlands province.

Project Duration

10/2019 – 12/2022. They are currently applying for a three-year extension.

Project Manager

Robson Vambe

Partner

Anglo American

Context

In Zimbabwe, where roughly 70% of the population works in the agricultural sector, 80% of livestock and 50% of the land is owned by smallholder farmers. However, these farmers often lack certain skills and knowledge that would improve their production. They also have difficulty accessing market information, marketing facilities, and finance. This hurts their production and livelihoods and inhibits progress against poverty and food insecurity.

Opportunity

There is great potential for farmers to improve their yields and livelihoods through organization into business groups, as well as through market connections and training in climate-smart techniques. In this way, farmer groups can become resilient drivers for reduced poverty and food insecurity in Zimbabwe.

Strategy

The Takura Project, an Anglo American-TechnoServe collaboration, aims to create and support economic opportunities for communities within the zone of influence of the Unki mine in the Midlands province. The project is recruiting farmers into economic groups or “smart villages”, which apply climate-smart, regenerative practices. These include fenced livestock groups, irrigation schemes, and crop production groups.

Working with ecosystem actors, the Takura Project will support 600 farmers, 55% of whom will be women, in the horticulture, poultry, and beef value chains. Specifically, the program will facilitate the organization of strong farmer groups, build the capacity of the organized farmers to commercialize their businesses, enable farmers to better collectively respond to market requirements, and facilitate the adoption of regenerative business practices.

Through program components such as training models, demonstration plots, nutrition gardens, cattle pastures, and fowl runs, as well as robust regenerative business education, the Takura Project will help the farmer groups ensure sustainable production and enable them to better respond to the demands of the private sector.

Results

• Over 400 farmers have actively participated in the program, supporting 1,000 new jobs.
• Three smart villages, each consisting of two integrated poultry, beef, and market garden facilities and one poultry facility, have been constructed.
• 20 tons of sugar snap and mangetout peas have already been exported from 10 hectares that were planted this year, and harvesting is still ongoing.
• All value chain activities have been registered on the Farmforce platform (a mobile service that links smallholder farmers to other actors in the agro-value chain), enabling production to comply with Good Agricultural Practice requirements, thus removing barriers to global trade.