“Commercializing beans from Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda through upgrading and deepening of value chains”
Status: Concluded (2015 – 2018)
Funder: Food Trade East and southern Africa and UKaid
Scope: Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania and Rwanda
Beans Enterprises and Structured Trade in East African Community (BESTEAC) was a 3year project sub granted by The UKAID funded programme ‘FoodTrade East and Southern Africa (ESA) with a focus on establishing trading systems that can build the confidence of large buyers such as exporters, processors and large institutions, who hesitate to depend on local smallholders for supplies.
The main objective of the project was to expand structured trade of 30,000 MT/year of beans produced by between 10,000 – 15,000 SMSFs the EAC, to Operate commercial production enterprises that are profitable and become consistent, reliable and competitive suppliers of raw and/ or semi-processed beans to medium and large scale/bulk buyers and/or processors serving national, regional and international markets.
The project’s main outputs were:
BEST-EAC project established 13 consortia led by the following private sector partners
In Kenya: Yash Commodities Ltd, Cheptarit Star Limited, Zero Two Heroes Ltd, Mwailu Enterprises Ltd
In Tanzania: Raphael Group Ltd, Kaderes Peasants Development (KPD) PLC, Tamagrasai Ltd
In Rwanda: Harvest Plus, SARURA Commodities Ltd
In Uganda: Ayella Pe Agro Services Ltd, Equator Seeds Ltd, Farmers’ Center Uganda (FACE)
Overall Project achievements so farOverUSD70,000
worth of loans was accessed directly by the farmers
Anthony Mugambi
Country Team Leader Kenya
amugambi@kilimotrust.org