Poverty reduction through financial inclusion: Quick stats: Tanzania’s mobile phone penetration is among the highest in Africa and the country is currently enjoying a robust financial sector growth. Yet, as of 2013, although 90% of Tanzanians were accessing mobile money services, the percent of adults with an account at a formal financial institution is just 17% nationally and just 14% in rural areas (Sources: GSMA Tanzania Enabling Mobile Money Policies; Findex Tanzania 2011). With a national commitment to reaching 50% formal financial inclusion by 2016, the  time is right for formal banking to catch up to the mobile money sector.

Link UP Programme: CARE Tanzania and NMB Bank are teaming up to build replicable models for financial inclusion for rural communities. The initiative provides opportunities for village savings and loans societies (VSLA) members to access formal financial services via linkages to financial service providers through the introduction and expansion of technology-enabled financial services. The initiative aims to reach 250,000 VSLA members for group linkages and 70,000 members for individual linkages. As VSLA groups mature, many seek the security of a bank account to hold their growing savings, or are in need of larger loans than the group can provide. In order to ensure that the VSLAs and its members understand financial management and the linkage with the formal sector, CARE Tanzania aims to build the capacity of the VSLAs and its members before any formal linkage occurs. 

HOW ‘NINJA’ AND ‘KARATE’ ARE MAKING A DIFFERENCE IN SOUTHERN TANZANIA

I bet the last thing that one thinks of when they hear words like ‘Ninja’ and ‘Karate’ would be anything close to agriculture and crop production. Popular Chinese movies, yes, but I doubt those words conjure up anything close to one of the most necessary elements in sesame production. But those are exactly the sort of names of brands of weed killers that allow women like Esha Bakari, a smallholder farmer who lives in a village in Nachingwea to cultivate and sell sesame, then use the proceeds to feed, clothe and take care of herself and her son.

Anna (35) and Charles Amuri (42) are a married couple who live in Chilimba village in Masasi District in rural southern Tanzania. They have three children, two boys and girl. “We are smallholder farmers” says Mrs. Amuri, “We joined Pathways initiatives in 2013 and through that we were able to be a part of groups were we learnt about sustainable agriculture, village saving and loan schemes as well as acquiring entrepreneurship skills.”

The family holds 20 acres of land, but they cultivate only 12 because of their limited capacity to manage the farm. Even before joining the program, the couple cultivated crops such as cassava, maize, sesame, green pea and pigeon peas. However, they attest that compared to what they are producing now, they were harvests were quite low. “The harvest averaged at less than 400kg of cassava per acre, maize was around 120kg/acre. The season before we started using the recommended practices we harvested 32kg of sesame and 40kg of green peas, each from an acre of land.” At the time, they were harvesting enough to feed the family and locally sold what was left for a small income.  But after seeing other farmers in their villages boasting of more crop yields they decided to try for themselves, and good thing they did! In the last season they harvested 2 tons of maize from 2.5acres of land, averaging at around 800kg/acre. They bagged 1.5tons of green peas from 2.5 acres and their sesame harvest averaged at just under 400kg/acre.