Tea for the Development of Tanzania

“Chai – Kwa Maendeleo ya Tanzania” (Tea for the Development of Tanzania) is the first WFT programme in East Africa which will see an investment of up to $9million USD over a six year period with the aim of increasing smallholder tea production and farmers’ margins as well as enhancing the competitiveness of the sector. 

The Chai project was launched in joint funding partnership with the Gatsby Foundation, in Tanzania, on the 28th September 2009 and has been developed in association with all stakeholders in the local Tanzanian Tea sector. “Chai” has established a Tanzanian based Tea sector advisory committee to advise us in the implementation of our action plan.

Tea is the fourth largest export crop in Tanzania with $28.7 million USD in export earnings. Approximately 30,000 smallholders are directly engaged in tea production; from the combination of estate workers and smallholder production; the sector supports over 50,000 families.  The Tanzanian tea industry however faces a number of significant challenges which Chai will seek to address through a number of interventions.

In our first year of operation, we undertook significant research into the constraints facing the sector. This gave us an intimate knowledge of the Tanzanian Tea Industry, provided us with a good baseline for measurement, guided our longer term implementation action plan and provided the Tanzanian Tea sector with invaluable data previously unavailable to them.

Based on the conclusions from this research a fairly stark message has emerged - it will not be possible to achieve Chai’s objectives without improving margins for smallholder farmers including a better green leaf price. Without this, the smallholders will lack sufficient incentive to commit enough effort to tea farming while the factories will, in turn, lack the quantity and quality of tea they require.  There is an urgent need to reverse the downward spiral in the industry and to ensure that farmers and factories can make mutually beneficial investments in yields and quality to become sustainably competitive.

In light of these findings Chai has launched a matching grant scheme aimed at encouraging private factories to develop smallholder friendly services and is working with farmers associations to develop governance and management as well as working with government institutions to support the revision of farmer pricing mechanisms and revise regulations.