8th September 2022- The "first child" Isabel Saíde had from PROMOVE Agribiz programme joins the agrodealer's four biological daughters: it´s a pickup truck she bought in 2021, when she saw her sales volume increase after joining the UN Food and Agriculture Organization's e-voucher system. Since then, the truck allows her to reach the most remote villages of Angoche District, currently one of the most difficult to access in Nampula Province.

Isabel Saíde, from Nametória Sede, is 47 years old and has sold agricultural inputs since 2017 in the small shop she built in front of her house. However, "it was with the increased demand for quality inputs by local farmers, who buy with the e-voucher of the PROMOVE Agribiz programme, that the business grew most", she says.

Besides buying her first truck, she improved her house and created a demonstration field for the use of agricultural inputs with an area of 1.5 ha. There she gives "smallholder farmers the opportunity to see the development of the different crops" she grows - corn, peanuts, sesame, cassava, and pulses: mung bean, pidgeon pea, and cowpea. In all her production she uses certified seeds and fertilizers.

It is there, in the field, that she explains in practice how sowing is correctly done and, there, too, she shows the differences between crop varieties, such as ZM 523 corn or LJ 24 peanuts, as well as between cycles, which can vary between 90-100 and 100-120 days, in the case of corn, for instance.

"If a crop was a person, inputs would be food"
Isabel Saíde, agro dealer
Province: Nampula, District: Angoche

"A person may have a field, but not have the means to buy quality seeds, so they use grains. PROMOVE Agribiz is helping smallholders overcome that barrier." To ensure that the seeds she sells won't disappoint customers and "have good quality indeed," the merchant says, as soon as she buys them from suppliers, she does a germination test herself in her store. "When you use quality inputs, crops grow well, they are healthy and have no diseases, thus production is higher. If a crop was a person, inputs would be food."

QUALITY AGRICULTURAL INPUTS
Encouraging investment in agricultural production
The e-voucher is a mechanism that facilitates access to quality agricultural inputs - especially certified seeds - through a temporary subsidy, co-financed by the farmer and PROMOVE Agribiz programme. Simultaneously, the e-voucher serves as a tool to promote good agricultural practices and to foster a sustainable commercial network for the sale of agricultural inputs in the programme's implementation areas.

Today, her first child from PROMOVE Agribiz – as the agro dealer calls her truck – has a sibling, a second truck, and with driver, manager and helper, who support her in her mobile sales, store and house employees, cashew tree spray operators, farmers working on the 52-ha production field, and bricklayers for new constructions, she now employs 19 people. The constructions are concentrated on a plot of land she recently bought, and are intended for a warehouse and a second store.

"Communities are like women in love with PROMOVE Agribiz"
Isabel Saíde, agro dealer
Province: Nampula, District: Angoche

Before joining PROMOVE Agribiz, Isabel tells, she "could buy food and books for [her] daughters, but the money she had was little. Life was normal", not as it is now. "Now, people call me boss, at that time, I was called lady." Since then, she continues, she is increasingly happy. "PROMOVE Agribiz has given me a new life. This programme is setting my heart free."
And it's not only Isabel who benefits: the surrounding communities, where she passes by with her truck in mobile sales, "are like women in love with PROMOVE Agribiz", she says, laughing at the image the statement creates. "It's a very big benefit, very much so."

PROMOVE Agribiz
"For a sustainable and market-oriented agriculture"

PROMOVE Agribiz programme aims to contribute to increasing the productivity and resilience of smallholder farmers by improving the delivery of agricultural extension and financial services, and by fostering business partnerships with companies along agrifood value chains in Nampula and Zambézia provinces.

One of six programmes funded by the European Development Fund (EDF) as an integrated approach to rural development in the two provinces, PROMOVE Agribiz is implemented by Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the World Bank Development Impact Evaluation (DIME), and the National Fund for Sustainable Development (FNDS).