Hello, my name is Aziz Abdulaziz, 28, Tanzanian, and on a usual day I spend most of my time behind a computer doing something related with software development.
While this remains true, in the past few months I’ve come to realize my passion in agriculture and was lucky enough to team up with four of my colleagues whom we shared common interest, as of April last year, PentaZeal was born.
We realize the opportunities that are available around us in our country in the field of Agriculture, and we intend to grab our share of that and in the process alleviate poverty from the rural small-scale farmers.
We are mainly interested in value addition/processing of local agricultural products, specifically vegetables and fruits, and to start with we intend to establish a chilli and tomato sauce processing factory.
Tanzania produces around 140,000 tonnes of tomatoes every year, and of that more than 25% of that is lost due to post harvest processes and lack of prompt market. The same situation also occurs with hot pepper as well, currently there are only two major processing factories for these products and we intend to be the third.
By establishing this factory, we are basically offering market for the millions of small-scale farmers who hustle to get the product ready but fail to get an adequate market for their produce. They invest their efforts to farm the product, they then sell it to us, we get the required raw materials for our products, we process them and produce a fine home-made product, and it’s generally a win-win situation.
To start with on this somewhat long journey, we’ve started to farm chilli ourselves, once we’ve mastered the farming aspect of it; we’d be in a better position to guide local farmers on how to farm chilli in order to achieve best results.
The revenue we collect from our first harvest will be re-invested in chilli farming with a small portion of it set aside for site seeing and selection for factory setup.
After 6 months of production we’ll have enough funds to start the initial steps of the factory establishment and in a period of 18 months from then we expect to have our first batch of production.
As of this point, our success is measured by the number of tons we harvest from our farm, but from there it’ll be the establishment of the factory and the ultimate measure would be the number of tons we in take from the local farmers and the number of products we push into the market.
Here is our budget for the USD 5,000 grant,
- Extension of our farm and installation of drip irrigation system. (25 April–15 May): USD 800
- Acquisition of required processing machines. (1– 30 July): USD 2,000
- Machinery Installation and setup (1– 20 August): USD 500
- Design and purchase of packaging containers. (1– 30 September): USD 700
- Design and purchase of labelling materials. (15– 10 September): USD 400
- Marketing and first line of production. (1– 30 November): USD 600
This is a dream of ours and by realizing this dream we will serve millions and millions more all over the world, it is my hope that you will support us in bringing this dream of ours into reality.
Thank you in advance.
Blogpost and picture submitted by Aziz Abdulaziz (Tanzania): 4thebetter[at]gmail.com
The content, structure and grammar are at the discretion of the author only.
This post is published as proposal #406 of “YAP” – our “Youth Agripreneur Project”.
The first selection of the winners will be based on the number of comments, likes and views each proposal gets.
As a reader, you can support this speaker’s entry:
- Leave a comment (question, suggestion,..) on this project in the comment field at the bottom of this page
- Support the post by clicking the “Like” button below (only possible for those with a com account)
- Spread this post via your social media channels, using the hashtag: #GCARD3
Have a look at the other “YAP” proposals too!
As a donor, support young agripreneurs and sponsor this unique project.
Check out the side column for our current sponsors. “YAP” is part of the #GCARD3 process, the third Global Conference on Agricultural Research for Development.
blog.gfar.net 
Great work my brother you have made a great opportunity to yourself , to the community around you and Tanzania atlarge.
Keep it up bro and God bless.
Great idea pals, your dancing the same song with Magufuli’s desire of transforming Tanzania into an industrialized nation. I can certainly tell you that, your project will change lives of many farmers in Tanzania. Go..go for this project buda!!
Such a creative mind. It’s a great Idea. All The Best
Agape your project is very crucial especially in the creation of new market and prividing support to the rural farmers.
However, I have tried to review the areas where you are going to allocate the funds and found that you might need a backup plan in case of emergencies.
Otherwise , you have a clear dream and work hard and pray hard to achieve it.
Brother,
Any help regarding the project – Technical Know How i.e. Making layout, Selection of Machines, recipies,formulation, trial production etc kindly mail : kgaher@gmail.com