2018

EKN visited the SIKIA team in Mbeya to see the project site, meet with local partners and understand the progress of the project. Special guest of the visit was the Dutch Ambassador Mr. Jeroen Verheul who also expressed its support and interest in SIKIA.

The SIKIA project team invited main donor NSO to visit the project and to meet the team of KT in Mbeya. A presentation was given on SIKIA’s progress made, the SAF was demonstrated, and farmers in one of the rice irrigation schemes were visited. The team met with Raphael Group Limited (RGL), the rice miller who is positioned as SIKIA frontrunner when it comes to commercializing the services.

All parties agreed that NSO’s visit was enlightening; the SIKIA team welcomed NSO’s ideas, comments, and suggestions for further improvement of project implementation while NSO indicated to have a good sense of where SIKIA is at and where it is heading.

SIKIA’s second rice agribusiness workshop was held at the Royal Tughimbe hall in Mbeya and was attended by 30 different agribusinesses. SIKIA project progress was presented with in particular more focus on the functionalities of SIKIA’s information platform for agribusinesses, the SAF. The SIKIA team gave an online demonstration of the SAF and the added value of it to agribusinesses.

While the first workshop in 2017 was rather informative, the second workshop generated a different kind of vibe among the participants namely “this could actually work and my business should be involved in this”. The SIKIA team collected all input and patiently took the time to address all questions asked from the potential clients.

Interested to receive more information on SIKIA’s SAF and want to know how it can help advance your agribusiness? Click here to register.

SIKIA is using radio broadcasting to enlarge the ecosystem and enroll as many farmers as possible to our agronomic information service. Mid-2018 we started airing weekly live radio broadcasts about weather information and good agricultural practices on Bomba FM. Due to the success on Bomba FM we followed up by also airing on a second station named Chai FM thereby increasing the reach and frequency of SIKIA’s radio programs to Kyela and Busokelo.

The live radio broadcasts encouraged interactive communication with smallholder rice farmers which resulted in an increased number of farmers enrolling to the agronomic advice service: in December we reach a milestone by registering our 10,000th farmer.

Are you interested in receiving agronomic advice on your phone? Or do you know rice farmers in Mbeya who could benefit from such information? Then help us reach them by sharing SIKIA’s USSD service number: *149*50*51#.