AAA’s mission, which is to foster innovation and growth of Small and Medium Enterprises cuts across the mission of Global Communities’ AIMS (Agribusiness Investment for Market Stimulation) program; which provides financing and training to small and medium sized agribusinesses. The AIMS program runs in Kenya, Tanzania and Malawi. For this reason, both organizations have joined in partnership to deliver the best services to SMEs within these countries.

On Friday 30th June, AAA Tanzania and Global Communities facilitated a training on Branding, Packaging and Access to Markets, in Dar-es-Salaam. Beneficiaries included mainly AAA Tanzania members from three Business Clubs; that is, Dar-es-Salaam BC, Dodoma BC and Mbeya BC. The aim was on informing members on the importance of branding in market sustainability.
The training enlightened members on how the changes in consumers’ behavior have driven the agricultural producers to start thinking about their marketing and branding strategies.

A brand is made up of many elements that create an emotional feeling in the customer’s mind about a company, its people, and its products. This emotional feeling helps a company’s Agro-Product to stand out in the consumer’s mind, as it is compared with other competitors’ products.

The success of the agro Agro-product market access depends on the Agro-product marketing mix which involves;
– Quality of the Agro-product,
– Price of the product,
– Distribution channels put in Place, and
– Promotion effort and advertisement, including the linkage strategies in place

Packaging quality will have a direct impact on the Quality of the Agro-product, while the Branding will influence the Promotion effort and advertisement.

The turnout of the training was amicably good with about 85% of members’ expectations being met. The training covered all aspects of access to marketing and how to get these markets. Branding was explained in fine details. It is not just the logo and label rather than the quality, consistency that will make a customer come back for more and hence recommend the product to other people.

To continuously bring added value events to members, AAA and GC, in their next training on branding, will bring more hands on practical work by inviting producers of packaging materials and extend the length of the training.