Today we are visiting Mgera
and Mkwawa. Mgera is the name of the
area. The SACCOS was initially
registered as the Kitapalimwa SACCOS. We
met at Mlangali, which I was told is one of the “Hamlets” nearby.
This was a special visit for
me, since I first visited Mlangali in 2014 and 2016. I was part of a group representing Zion
Lutheran Church in Cottage Grove, Minnesota, which is the partner congregation
of the parish at Kitapalimwa. We helped
to establish the SACCOS at Kitapalimwa in 2014.
While we were there, we visited the 12 “Preaching Points” near Mlangali,
holding medical clinics at a different village every day.
We stayed at the home of
Pastor Regina Kibasa in Mlangali. She
graciously shared her home with us. We
had many pleasant evening meals there, followed by many evening checkers games
with members and officers of the SACCOS and many of the Evangelists of the
Preaching Points and translators including Kelvin Mwano and Goodluck Kihongosi.
It was good to see Jomo Mahenge,
the Chairman, Ayoub Mtweve, the Treasurer, Howa Sanga, the Secretary, and Mary
Sanga, again. There were hugs all around
when we met again.
Kitapalimwa is preparing to
register their AMCOS. When we described
how the AMCOS and the SACCOS would interact together, there were many
questions. The officers of both he
SACCOS and the AMCOS were present. There
are currently 61 members of the SACCOS and the AMCOS. This includes 29 women and 32 men.
We discussed the importance
of obtaining the forecast for the demand for farming input supplies. The officers of the SACCOS are looking
forward to completing the construction of the new Integrated Development Center
(IDC) at Mlangali which will include warehouse space. They inquired about the availability of the
new PICS bags that will enable them to store their maize without losing part of
the crops after harvest due to insect damage or mold. We told them that we expect the PICS bags to
arrive in the next week.
The meeting at Mlangali. Howa Sanga (behind Ayoub Ayoub Mtweve) SACCOS
Secretary, Ayoub Mtweve, SACCOS Treasurer, Jomo Mahenge, SACCOS Chairman, Mary
Sanga, member of SACCOS and AMCOS, Sophia Kalonga, AMCOS Secretary and Lawrence
Msigala, AMCOS Chairman
It was nearing the time when
we had to depart for our next visit, Mkwawa.
We just had time for one interview.
We spoke to Mary Sanga, who we had interviewed in the past, but she
loves to talk about how the SACCOS has made a difference in her life.
Mary Sanga is married and has
three children. The first two children
are already married and her third child is in secondary school, Form 3
(equivalent to our Junior year in high school).
Mary farms 10 acres of maize,
2 acres of tomatoes, and 2 acres of sunflowers.
This is a lot to farm. She hires
a team of oxen to cultivate the land, and she hires laborers to help her to
farm. In 2014, the first year of the
SACCOS, she took a loan of TZH 500,000 (about $220). In 2015 she took a loan of TZH 1,000,000,
followed by loans of TZH 1,000,000 in both 2916 and 2017. With the profits from her loans, she has sent
her children to school and bought additional property. She intends to buy 2 milling machines and
provide a contract service of milling maize to flour.
When the IDC is completed,
she plans to use the warehouse to store grain, so as to obtain the higher
market prices some months after harvest.
She is looking forward to having the AMCOS registered and in
operation. She thinks that the AMCOS is
going to improve her productivity. She
looks forward to having the farm inputs available on time. When she has purchased the inputs from
distributors in town, the supplies are not always available when she needs
them. She also said that she looks
forward to the AMCOS helping her to market her crops. In the past, when she has sold to a middleman,
she has gotten lower prices than the market prices that she will receive using
the AMCOS. It is always a pleasure
talking to Mary. She is a very good businesswoman.
We then drove on to
Mkwawa. Mkwawa is close to Iringa, and
many of the members have jobs in Iringa as well as farming small plots of land
near their homes in Mkwawa. The AMCOS is
a registered member of the Joint AMCOS but has not yet completed registration
with the government. There are 43
members of both the SACCOS and AMCOS. This
includes 23 women and 20 men.
Again there was a lively
discussion during the presentation of the AMCOS/SACCOS interaction process with
many questions. There were some “What
if” questions as members tried to anticipate the kinds of situations that may
arise and they would be called on to manage.
One member asked whether a member of an AMCOS who did not want to become
a member of a SACCOS but wanted to purchase supplies through the AMCOS by
paying cash, would be allowed to do that.
We said that it was our experience that every member wanted to be part
of the SACCOS so that they could take advantage of taking loans. We asked whether they had actually
encountered such a situation. They said
no. This is not a situation that we
expect to encounter.
A member suggested that they
could charge fees for storing crops in the warehouse. We responded that the local AMCOS was in
charge and could decide locally whether to charge fees such as that.
Another question was asked
that has recurred several times. “What happens when there is no market
available at any price?” This is part of
the concern that the price of maize has fallen to TZH 330/Kg, when it was TZH
1200/Kg as recently as May 2017, a drop of nearly 75%! There have been many questions about finding
more marketplaces that can purchase maize from farmers. This is an issue that we will continue to
investigate.
We are also being asked about
whether the AMCOS could enter into value-added processing of milling maize into
flour. We have considered this, however,
we will be investigating other sources of milling buyers in the short
term. In the longer term we will need to
consider all options.
The discussions lasted long,
so we are headed back to Iringa.
No comments:
Post a Comment