Telling the ECSA Story

Women organic tea pluckers seated for an event. CARE International In the hills of Bungu, where tea plantations stretch as far as the eye can see, sits the SAKARE Specialty Tea Factory—the first-ever speciality tea demo factory in Tanzania. This milestone marked the beginning of a remarkable journey aiming to bridge not just the gap of gender roles but also the technological and market divides that have long dominated the landscape for smallholder tea farmers in Bungu. SAKARE Specialty Tea Factory emerges as a beacon of change, and against the odds, it boasts a workforce where women play a predominant role.   At the production level, women like Hobokeza Moyo stand as exemplars of dedication and transformation. They turn their tea farm plots into organic havens, anticipating a remarkable 23% increase in income compared to conventional green leaf prices. Hobokeza’s optimism is infectious as she shares, “Even though we are yet to sell to Sakare Specialty Tea Company, we expect to sell...

Agatha showcasing her soya nutrition flour "Sote Lishe"     Agatha Mkayula,49, a mother of 6 children, resides in Ibumila village in Iringa DC, Tanzania. In 2017, she engaged in the Growing is Learning project. She has received multiple trainings in Soya farming practices, Good Agricultural Practice (GAP), home gardening, Participatory Scenario Planning, post-harvest management, recordkeeping & data quality, food types, Gender-Based Violence and entrepreneurship. Agatha had an opportunity of participating in the soybean processing training in 2018 and commenced her small scale business. She processed soybean drinks and nutritional flour for children/adults in the same year. "I was engaged in a project as a mere farmer with an increased responsibility of being a lead farmer," Agatha says. Conversely, it was an eye-opener for her. However, Agatha used soft plastic bags to pack soybeans products which limited my markets opportunities due to the use of poor pa...

  Natural Resource Management (NRM)  clearing weeds on a field enclosed for future grazing. CARE/David Mutua On the border between Kenya and Ethiopia, in Eymolo location, Banisa sub-county of Mandera, Aden Ibrahim and members of the Natural Resource Management (NRM) - group he chairs - go about clearing weeds on one of the group’s two enclosures. As a predominantly pastoralist society, the community in Banisa heavily relies on available pasture for the survival of their livestock. “Management of land and pasture through the establishment of such enclosures is key. We live in a semi-arid region, and we experience frequent droughts and little rainfall, and this causes animals to die due to lack of pasture,” Aden says. Camels searching for food in Eymolo, Banisa sub-county of Mandera County. CARE/David Mutua Rangeland management is critical in ensuring that pasture in the pasture lands are not degraded due to overgrazing. It is the practice of preserving sections of pasture to ...

Zawadi Maransi  lives in Goma, North Kivu Province in Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) with her husband and their two children. She has   been active in the Mawe Tatu (II) project since 2019, participating in a VSLA group, partaking in entrepreneurship trainings, and even eventually starting her own successful soap-making business. Zawadi Maransi BEFORE MAWE TATU Before her soap business was up and running, Zawadi was not able to find a way to consistently contribute to meeting household needs for her family. Her family was surviving 100% on the money her husband received from his work, and even then, it was only a means to get from day to day – it was not a long term solution or sufficient, not even fully covering a month’s needs. Borrowing money was a frequent option, but that only further complicated   her family’s   financial situation.   “We could borrow from where we normally buy goods in the neighborhood…[but] I knew at the end of the mon...