Flourishing futures

In Tanzania, growing demand for cooking oil has been met largely by palm oil imports rather than increased sunflower oil production. Low working capital means that oil producers can only buy and process a fraction of farmers’ sunflowers, capping sunflower oil production at a quarter of its potential.

Farm Africa provided technical assistance to actors working across the Tanzanian sunflower sector to meet growing domestic demand for cooking oil. This project worked with agricultural cooperatives and 10,000 of their members to support farmers to establish or develop sunflower businesses.

The project encouraged farmers to plant a new hybrid variety of highly productive and drought-tolerant sunflowers. We provided cooperatives with training in organisational management, production, aggregation and sunflower marketing and increased the amount of oil small and medium-sized sunflower processors’ produce.

We supported cooperatives to improve their financial management skills to make them eligible for loans and credit. Also, farmers learned new practices that increased the amount of oil they could extract from seeds, as well as built relationships with hybrid sunflower seed growers.

Greater collaboration between farmers, traders and processors benefit everyone involved in Tanzania’s sunflower industry. By facilitating relationships, contracts and trading arrangements between market actors, Farm Africa created the business environment needed to unleash the sector’s potential.