Musika signed an agreement with the Citizens Economic Empowerment Commission (CEEC) aimed at strengthening and promoting sustained growth of the small rural agribusiness.
Musika Managing Director – Mr. Reuben Banda and CEEC Director General – Dr. Muwe Mungule signed off the MoU on October 26th 2022, which will form a basis upon which various interventions will be implemented to support small rural agribusinesses.
Under the agreement, CEEC will provide investment support to SMEs operating in the agriculture sector, and leverage on Musika’s experience in brokering commercial linkages between SMEs and major primary suppliers. Additionally, Musika and CEEC will facilitate a mentorship and coaching programme that is growth-oriented and will be sustained beyond Musika’s initial support to SMEs under the Agribusiness accelerate Initiative’ (AAI) project that was funded by Norad.
From inception, Musika has always recognised the critical role that SMEs play as ‘last mile’ distributors of inputs and value-add services, and as first-level aggregators of commodity in the case of the output market. That is why in the majority of business models that it has supported with funding from its donors – the Embassy of Sweden in Lusaka, Irish Aid, Norad and WorldFish – the ‘intermediary’ sector plays a key role in deepening the agricultural supply chain.