News & Insights

"As an individual you can easily be broken. When you are many, you are much stronger!"

The North eastern part of Tanzania has some impressive landscapes. With Mount Kilimanjaro in the background, the districts of Moshi and Simanjiro are home to acres and acres of beautiful agricultural land, interspersed with the occasional baobab tree.

“We started one year ago with just 15 farmers, now we have over 200 members. The future looks bright, because now we are also starting negotiations with retailers like Nakumatt, Tusky’s, Shoprite, Urban Wholesalers,…", says Joseph Awala, chairman of the Kwapa Farmers Cooperative. “

"There are two primary choices in life: To accept conditions as they are, or, accept the responsibility for changing them."

Last week the entire team of VECO East Africa (both Tanzanian & Ugandan colleagues) met up in Mbale, Uganda for the Regional Reflection Meeting.

In two weeks time, VECO East Africa will host a workshop in Kampala to disseminate the findings of a commissioned study on Agri-finance value chain models in Uganda and share lessons learnt.

VECO East Africa is proud to announce an official collaboration with the Africa Innovations Institute (AfrII), in a bid to jointly develop the emerging cassava industry in Uganda.

Recently, VECO EA underwent some major changes. Over the last months, our staff has been very busy implementing the new strategy and programs, opening new offices, and getting familiar with different work areas. However, the fruits of the hard work of the past are all but forgotten. That is why three of our colleagues found their way to the field, looking for evidence of the sustainability of the onion project in Simanjiro, phased out in 2012.

The Mkuranga District Commercial Farmers Organization (DCFO) successfully delivered 3075kg of high quality cassava flour to Coast Millers Ltd. on 12th November 2013, with support from the Common Fund of Commodities (CFC).