So this is Ipogolo

Today we are at Ipogolo.  We are met by Rev. Robinson Sakafu, who asks us to join him in his office for chai before the meeting.  Rev Sakafu is new to the Ipogolo parish.  He has only moved here two weeks ago.  He has not had previous exposure to the Iringa Hope SACCOS or AMCOS, but he is very interested in learning about us and enthusiastic about the benefits to his congregation. 

There are 80 members in the SACCOS here.  There are 45 members who belong to both the SACCOS and the AMCOS.  This includes 24 women and 21 men. 

The SACCOS officers are not present at the beginning of the meeting, because they are working.  We encourage both SACCOS and AMCOS officers to be present for our meetings to ensure that there is agreement on how the two organizations will need to work together.

The members expressed their anticipation in having the AMCOS in operation.  They said that when they bought products through distributors, they didn’t have any trust that they would be receiving the products they had ordered, or that the fertilizer would not be re-bagged with filler product.  They also said that there were problems with availability.  Often the products were not available at the time that they were needed for planting. 

They were satisfied with the presentation of how the AMCOS and the SACCOS would interact with each other.  However they were looking forward to receiving more detailed instruction on the record keeping requirements and the documentation that would be required.  We told them that we are planning to give detailed directions in a training session that would be announced shortly. 

There were some questions about how things would operate.  One question was whether the AMCOS could take the funds that members had invested to purchase shares to purchase supplies.  We responded that the purchase of supplies would be provided by the funds loaned for the purchase of supplies by the SACCOS, so there would be no need to use the funds generated by the purchase of shares by the members of the AMCOS.

There also was an ongoing concern that there is no market for the sale of maize.  It seems that many farmers here stored their maize from the previous year’s crop in the hopes that the price would rise and then they would sell their maize.  Unfortunately, maize prices continued to fall from their high of TZH 1,200 per Kg in May 2017 to the current price of TZH 330 per Kg today.  As a result, there are two years of harvests available to sell at this time.  This seems to be presenting more of a supply than the capacity of milling companies.  As a result there is little to no market for buying the maize being offered by the farmers. 

After the discussion, we interviewed two persons.  The first to be interviewed was Atu Naymoga.  She is married and has three children and six grandchildren. 

Her first loan was in 2015 for TZH 900,000, or about $400.  She used the loan for seed for raising maize on her 2 acres and for her charcoal business.  Unfortunately, the weather was not good and she had a bad yield so she only made a little money. 

The second interview was with Shdack Kilamgwila.  He is married with three children.  He farms maize and raises pigs.  His first loan was in 2015 when he took a loan for TZH 300,000.  He invested TZH 200,000 to buy 4 pigs and spent TZH 100,000 on input supplies for his maize.  He estimates that he made a profit of TZH 600,000.  He repeated the same in 2016, and again made a profit of TZH 600,000 (or about $800).  He was not able to take a loan in 2017 because there were not sufficient funds to loan to all those members who applied. 

With his profits, he bought a lot on which to build a house.  Although the house is not yet finished, he and his family have moved into the house while they continue to work on finishing it. 

Jared Kivike, the new chairman of the SACCOS, had arrived late, so we invited him and Gideon Mdegala, the chairman of the AMCOS to remain so that we could talk to both of them together.  They were joined by Dickson Msungu who is the Secretary of the AMCOS and also the Secretary of the Joint AMCOS and Rev. Robinson Sakafu.

We asked the two chairmen about what they thought the biggest challenges would be for them in the coming year.  Kivike said that there were a number of members that had loans that had not yet been re-paid.  Kivike said that all the members had been contacted and were paying slowly, but regularly.  There were three members who had been farming, but had gotten government jobs and had moved away.  Their directors had been contacted and the money was re-paid.  These are just some of the challenges facing the officers of the SACCOS and AMCOS.  However they are responding by taking the correct actions. 

For the past year, the SACCOS had loaned TZH 20,000,000 (about $8,850) of their own capital, and TZH 10,000,000 that they had borrowed from the Joint SACCOS.  In spite of this there was still a shortfall of about TZH 25,000,000 (or over $11,000) for which members wanted to take out loans, but for which there was not sufficient loan capital to meet all the members’ demands. 

While it is frustrating to be short of capital to meet the demand, it is also good to see that the members are doing well and appreciate what is available.  Problems like these are issues that have to be dealt with by a growing organization.