Introduction about the project
IIABA project was funded by the French Development Agency (AFD), coordinated by the African Organic Network (AfrONet), and implemented in Tanzania, Uganda, and Morocco. The three countries were selected due to their differences in terms of agro-ecological zones, the number of organic farmers, and the surface area of converted land.
The main objective of the project was to catalyse a change in the scale of organic agriculture in Uganda, Morocco, and Tanzania and in doing so, to facilitate its development more generally in Africa.
It has three specific objectives:
1. The identification of institutional innovations that will allow a change of scale of ecological and organic agriculture in the three countries.
2. The consolidation of capacities of AfrONet and its members.
3. The dissemination of the targeted institutional innovations to partner countries and within AfrONet.
A transition to organic agriculture requires simultaneous actions throughout the food system by moving beyond production and processing. This includes working on the institutional innovations in organic agriculture related to markets, guarantee systems and public policies.
Project focus areas
Focus area 1: Management and coordination: This work package aims to ensure the effectiveness of the project, the approaches taken in each country, their coordination, and monitoring and evaluation.
Focus area 2: Building innovative markets: This aims to build fair and inclusive markets by involving both smallholders and disadvantaged consumers to connect them to the markets by creating short value chains.
Focus area 3: Innovating to guarantee organic quality: This focus area aims to understand and support the PGS system that will create trust between producers and consumers in a way that is affordable.
Focus area 4: Innovative public policies: The aim here is to support the definition and implementation of the public policies that do not hinder but on contrary facilitate the development of organic farming.
Focus area 5: Communication, dissemination and capacity development: This is dedicated to capitalize on the project activities to ensure the dissemination of the project results and strengtherning the networks’ capacities at the continental level.
In Tanzania the project is implemented in Zanzibar, Dodoma, Songea and Mafia.
Project partners
The IIABA project is implemented by different partners who play different roles in contributing to achieving the project goals.
1. French Development Agency (AFD): This is the main donor of the project responsible for providing financial support to facilitate the interventions
2. NOGAMU, RIAM, FIMABIO, and TOAM: These are the national movements in Uganda, Morocco, and Tanzania responsible for the actual implementation of the project activities in the project areas specifically the implementation of focus areas 2,3 and 4.
3. INRAE and CIRAD: These are French research institutes that provide technical support to implementing partners on the innovations developed through research and its dissemination. They play the technical advisory role to project partners
4. AfrONet: This is the coordinating agency for the IIABA project.
Key achievements
Successfully completed consumer study for organic products: The study was done by French and Tanzania students who worked together to complement each other in terms of knowledge and expertise with the close supervision of the INRAE and TOAM.
The study of the Participatory Guarantee Systems (PGS) was completed and the results presented: It was also conducted by interns from Sokoine University in close collaboration with the French student with technical support from CIRAD.
Established 6 PGS groups in Dodoma, Zanzibar, Mafia, and Madaba. Following trainings and regular mentoring from TOAM, three groups became fully certified and are now able to use the kilimohai organic mark to sell their products.
Through the IIABA project, TOAM was able to review the PGS operational manual and develop the updated version in a consultative process that involved all stakeholders’ representatives.
The project supported the development of short value-chain circuits in Madaba by providing the processing machine for spice to the PGS group and in Mafia the oil refinery machine for PGS farmers in Mafia. The reason behind this support is to enable PGS groups to be able to add value to their product and shorten the value chain to get more benefits of their products.
TOAM in collaboration with INRAE was able to conduct four producers-consumers roundtable meetings in Zanzibar, Mafia, Dodoma, and Songea. In these dialogues, stakeholders were able to analyze the current status of the sector by using the SWOT analysis and drawing the roadmap towards addressing the challenges and identifying the responsible partners.
IIBA project has supported the policy study conducted by CIRAD and TOAM which focused on local policies analysis. The study was completed and presented to the Ministry of Agriculture and the final reported generated. The findings of the study were very important in guiding the advocacy work of TOAM during the local policy dialogues in the districts were the project was being implemented.
TOAM through the IIABA Project has been participating in organising the regional and national conferences for information sharing and knowledge. TOAM organizes the national EOA conferences where by the last one was on November 2023 which had a remarkable memory of the official Launch of the National Ecological Organic Agriculture Strategy (NEOAS).
Also TOAM participated in the organizing of the regional PGS workshop with other project partners. The workshop was held in Kigali and PGS which brought together the PGS practitioners from East Africa to share their experiences and draw a roadmap towards improving the structure and functioning of the PGS at the regional level.
TOAM also supported its farmers and stakeholders to participate in the 5th African Organic Conference held in December 2023, at Kigali. All these platforms are considered to be very potential for the growth of sector
