Musika is a Zambian non-profit company with a mandate to stimulate and support private investment in the Zambian agricultural market with a specific focus on the lower end of these markets.
Our goal is to achieve poverty reduction by making sure agricultural markets work for all stakeholders and in particular the rural poor in Zambia.
Musika’s approach to reducing poverty and creating wealth in rural Zambia involves stimulating the development of a supportive market environment that provides long term and sustainable opportunities for farmers to invest in their own production and to use the markets to graduate out of poverty.
This approach is consistent with the Making Markets Work for the Poor (M4P) methodology which is based on stimulating change within the market systems upon which the poor are dependent in order to stimulate greater and more beneficial involvement of poor people in economic development.
Our History
Musika Development Initiatives Zambia Limited – trading as Musika – has been in operation since late 2011 and it has gained a strong reputation in the Zambian market for innovation, results and service delivery.
The company was registered on 20 July, 2010, to stimulate and support private sector investment in the agricultural market, and the name ‘Musika’ itself means ‘market’ in several local languages. Musika was formed as a follow on to the successful market development interventions achieved under the USAID|PROFIT private sector development programme, which was run in Zambia for more than seven years by a consortium of two USA-based organisations, NBCA-CLUSA and Cardno. PROFIT was managed in Zambia in a large part by the staff that now make up Musika.
Through using the value chain approach in engaging the agribusiness industry, these staff were able to create market linkages, and it was from that background that they managed to to create a local private company limited by guarantee that has evolved over time to what it is now; a thought leader in the Zambian agricultural sector.
Musika started work in November 2011, after receiving Funding from Sida through the Embassy of Sweden in Lusaka. SIDA was joined in 2012 by the UK Government’s DFID as core-support funding partners. In 2018, Musika also received funding from the Norwegian Government’s NORAD.
In its present-day form, Musika facilitates the development of commercially-grounded business relationships that are beneficial to both the private sector and small-holder farmers in Zambia.
What Musika does
Musika operates across Zambia and in all aspects of the agricultural sector, providing technical advisory services and early-stage, catalytic investment support to agribusinesses that are committed to engaging smallholder and emergent farmers in strong and mutually beneficial commercial relationships as their clients, suppliers and consumers.
Musika’s approach to reducing poverty and creating wealth in rural Zambia involves stimulating business relationships between the corporate sector and the smallholder farming economy in which there is some form of ‘value addition’ to the transaction. This ‘value’ can be in the form of embedded extension, access to finance, technology transfer, forward pricing, assured off-take, supply contracts and other market services that give not only the opportunity but also the technical knowledge and confidence to smallholders to invest in and improve their farming businesses.
Musika also supports innovative market-based solutions to some of Zambia’s environmental challenges and strives to ensure women are key participants in and beneficiaries of improved agricultural markets.
Who does Musika work with
Musika works with all stakeholders in the agricultural market system, with an emphasis on private sector entities that are committed to working with the rural poor as their suppliers, consumers, clients or employees.
How we work
Musika is implementing the Making Markets Work for the Poor (M4P) approach that seeks to fundamentally change the way markets work to engage with and benefit the poor and relatively marginalised groups. This change must sustainably benefit the progress of the agriculture sector, firms and rural Zambians. As such, Musika’s target clients and intervention points in this system are generally the firms (and to a lesser extent key associations) in the core market or supporting functions or rules (regulators) of the sector.
For reasons of sustainability and to reduce market distortions, Musika rarely implements interventions directly at the level of the rural poor, which are Musika’s (and its donors’) ultimate ‘clients’.
Musika’s monitoring and evaluation system aims to demonstrate how its interventions at the level of the firm lead to the desired impact at the level of the ultimate ‘clients’, and how that impact will be measured and attributed to the project.
Utilising its wide networks in and knowledge of the Zambian agricultural market, Musika’s technical staff in Lusaka and around the country identify opportunities for investment and innovation with agribusiness partners and then supports the testing and developing of those opportunities through technical support and targeted, time-bound ‘catalytic’ financial subsidy to mitigate the risk of making the initial investments in new geographies, new business models or new technologies.
Musika’s operational decision-making process is guided by the principle of ‘return on investment’; the return being in terms of co-investment (leverage), scale, commercial sustainability, and finally the ‘added value’ to the smallholder sector.
These investments, clustered in four main practice areas (above) are executed and tracked by the technical personnel supported by an experienced administrative and financial management team. A knowledge management team contributes monitoring and results management processes and a dedicated research unit that tracks the impact over time on smallholder households derived from their engagement in constructive commercial relationships with agribusiness.
Who owns and manages Musika
Musika is owned by six key Zambian agriculture-related institutions and managed by a local team with an extensive and accomplished record in agricultural market development. An experienced Board of Directors drawn from the Zambian agricultural and business communities also supports Musika’s work.
The six key Zambian agriculture-related institutions that own Musika are;
- Zambia National Farmers Union (ZNFU)
- Golden Valley Agricultural Research Trust (GART)
- Grain Traders Association of Zambia (GTAZ)
- Indaba Agricultural Policy Research Institute (IAPRI)
- Zambia Seed Traders Association (ZASTA)
- Bankers Association of Zambia (BAZ)