Bridging the Gap Between Farmers and Finance
For thousands of smallholder farmers across Tanzania’s Southern Agricultural Growth Corridor (SAGCOT), access to finance remains one of the biggest barriers to expanding production, adopting sustainable agricultural practices, and building resilient livelihoods. While banks, investors, insurance providers, and climate finance facilities exist, many farmer cooperatives remain unable to access the capital they need to grow.
Recognizing this challenge, IUCN through the SUSTAIN Productive Landscapes for Inclusive Growth (SUSTAIN Pro) programme, partnered with the Kilimo Round Table Africa (KRTA) to convene a high-level Investment and Matchmaking Roundtable to break that pattern by reframing the dialogue from transactional matchmaking to a structured diagnostic and pipeline launch. The event brought together financial institutions, government agencies, agribusinesses, insurers, mechanization providers, farmer organizations, development partners, and cooperatives to address one critical question: How can we unlock investment and finance for Tanzania’s smallholder farmers? Rather than serving as another networking event, the roundtable was designed as a practical platform for action creating direct dialogue between those seeking finance and those providing it, while identifying the barriers preventing productive investment across agricultural value chains.
Photos: IUCN Tanzania
