Alko Vintages believes in empowering communities, through agribusiness as a means to achieving sustainable development.
For more than a decade, we devoted resources towards supporting small-scale farmers in more than 30 villages in the Dodoma Region in Tanzania to learn and practice Viticulture as a means of earning decent livelihoods.
We see viticulture as a lucrative venture, considering the semi-arid climate of Dodoma, which is favorable to grape farming; as evidenced by previous attempts. As business, we believe viticulture has a great potential to transform lives, given the growing demand for wine consumption across the world. This is why we have invested in value addition through winemaking.
We have developed a partnership program that targets to sustain farmers, resources and communities by promoting farming practices and methods that are profitable, environmentally sound and good for communities.
Through our Contract Farming arrangement, more than 1,200 farmers have been recruited into viticulture, and are now making regular income from selling grapes to supplement their earnings from other economic activities.
Under the Contract Farming arrangement, Alko Vintages provides seedlings, assorted farm inputs and extension services to enable the farmers cultivate healthy vines, which in turn produce quality grapes for winemaking.
This partnership program guarantees ready market for the grapes produced by the farmers, most of whom are poor and heavily depend on subsistence farming activities for their livelihoods.
Since 2007, Alko Vintages has trained more than 1,200 famers in viticulture, most of whom are now producing high-quality yields of grapes for winemaking. The trainings cover best practices in Viticulture and Financial Literacy, with the view of empowering the villagers into deriving value from their grapevines.
Farmers contracted by Alko Vintages are organised in special groups within their respective villages for easier handling. It is through these groups that the company advances the sustainable farming agenda, through training, field visits and regular interactions to ensure that the farmers get the most out of their farming activities.
The partnership program also plays a pivotal role in the company’s growth strategy, because it guarantees consistent yields along the expansion plans that inform our capital expenditure.
In the long term, our desire is to achieve a fair trade environment that is defined by dialogue, transparency and respect, that seeks greater equity in trade.
As a corporate citizen, Alko Vintages believes that farmers have the right to get the right value from their investments and must be treated with the respect and regard they deserve.
