Agricultural Markets Development Trust (AMDT)

The Agriculture Markets Development Trust (AMDT) has been established by the Governments of Denmark, Government of Ireland, Government of Sweden and the Government of Switzerland. The Trust has been established as a long-term facility to address challenges experienced in past markets development initiatives in Tanzania. It responds to the Government of Tanzania’s call for “business as unusual” by applying new, innovative approaches to the development of agricultural markets. Challenges of past initiatives in Tanzania can be categorised as follows: (i) Initiative designs that fail to address core constraints with particular markets, (ii) Initiatives that have limited outcomes and impacts for businesses and/or are too short to be able to catalyse systemic change, (iii) Initiatives do not improve the business environment, (iv) Initiatives deliver only partially or fail completely due to implementers not having the right skill sets or there is poor coordination among interventions, and are unable to manage and execute timely.  

AMDT seeks to directly address these concerns by facilitating interventions that identify and address diagnosed constraints to selected agriculture value chains. AMDT will promote growth, facilitate value chain development and multiply successful approaches across value chains in agriculture and agro-industries. The Trust will work with the Private Sector, Government and Civil Society Organisations to promote the making Markets Work for the Poor approach (M4P) to value chain development that spurs changes to market systems that have a broad and sustained impact on the lives of smallholder farmers and the competitiveness and resilience of agricultural MSMEs. 

AMDT will facilitate these markets through interventions organised under two pillars: (i) The Strategic Advice Pillar, where the Trust will indirectly provide information, advice and support that enable actors cause or implement reforms of sectoral business environments that improve the functioning of selected agricultural value chains, and (ii) the Market Facilitation Pillar, where the trust will facilitate market development interventions in selected value chains starting with Maize and Sunflower.    

To achieve this, AMDT overall objective is to increase incomes and employment opportunities for poor women, men, and young people in Tanzania. In pursuit of this objective, AMDT intends to achieve two, measurable outcomes: (a) Outcome 1: Smallholder farmers and related MSMEs are more able to compete and prosper in selected value chains, (b) Outcome 2: The enabling environment is improved in agricultural value chains (i.e. rules, norms, regulations, policy, information/knowledge, coordination, and trust).