A TANZANIA manufacturing company—Darsh Industries—has won a multimillion grant under the Agriculture Fast Track (AFT) Fund, the African Development Bank (AfDB) has announced.
AFT fund, which enjoys support from USAID, Swedish Agency for International Development and Danish International Development Agency, aims at enhancing food security by assisting Africa’s agricultural sector to transform innovative ideas into bankable investments.
Darsh Industries, a tomato sauce processor, plans to set up a new tomato processing plant in Iringa, with a daily processing capacity of 150 tonnes. The envisaged factory will purchase tomatoes from local farmers, who struggle to access markets. In the past, lack of markets resulted in spoilage and market gluts that in turn led to depressed prices.
Darsh Industries, which also offers extension services to farmers, will use the 221,000 million US dollars (over 350m/-) grant award to finalise the preparatory work, including a feasibility study and Environmental Impact Assessment.
Administered by the African Development Bank, the AFT funds the sponsors of public and private sector agriculture infrastructure investment projects to undertake the project An AfDB statement in Dar es Salaam over the weekend quoted the bank’s Director of Agriculture and Agro-Industry, Mr Chiji Ojukwu, as saying:
“These awards are a demonstration of the extent to which African countries and their development partners are willing to go to propel the African agriculture transformation through enhanced development of agribusinesses.”
Darsh Industries and its counterpart— the National Federation of Food Production Cooperatives of Côte d’Ivoire, have met all of the AFT grant requirements.
They will now work with the AfDB to finalize the paper work that will lead to the release of the resources.
The Côte d’Ivoire grantee is a national apex body of 11 food and agricultural cooperatives that plans to increase its members’ food production through investments in drip irrigation system and improve the marketing of the output with new fresh produce handing and food processing facilities.
It will receive a grant of 552,000 US dollars to cover the initial preparation.
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