TUNAJALI Programme in collaboration with IMARISHA project has conducted week long training on Market Analysis to empower Savings and Internal Lending Communities (SILC) to manage their businesses thus improving their livelihoods.
The training funded by the American People through the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) as part of the US President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) was concluded over the weekend in Morogoro Region.
Talking about the training that brought together SILC coordinators from all 24 districts of the TUNAJALI supported regions namely Iringa, Njombe, Morogoro, Dodoma and Singida, the Programme’s Senior Technical Officer, Ms Hawa Kisusi, said the participants were taken through Understanding Market Constraints, opportunities and strategies to support vulnerable households. She said the training was very important in empowering SILC groups to choose the right investment.
“If it is business that they want to engage themselves in, they need to know demand of the goods and services they want to offer and how to manage the business,” she said. Ms Kisusi said most of these SILC groups want to start businesses, but they do not have entrepreneurship skills.
“That is why TUNAJALI saw the importance of equipping them with the entrepreneurship skills to enable them choose their businesses wisely to yield fruits,” she said.
The trainer, Mr Ipyana Mwakasaka of IMARISHA, said that market analysis knowledge is very important for people who want to engage in business.
“People get loses in their businesses because they don’t analyse their markets, what they do is just to cut and paste other people’s business plans not taking care of the different environments they are in,” said Mr Mwakasaka.
He said market analysis is very tricky, because in business there is no one solution that will fit in all situations as there are many things to be taken care of such as knowing the demand and supply rules, production costs, opportunities available and constraints.
Thanking TUNAJALI and IMARISHA for this training, Ms Zainab Zambo, the Allamano Centre Home-based care focal person, said the training was very beneficial not only to the participants, but also to all SILC members as they were going to train the groups in their districts what they have been taught.
Since the introduction of SILC in the five TUNAJALI supported regions 16,336 people have formed 634 groups whereas 6,225 members are males and 10,111 females. These members have savings of a cumulative 1,275,969,682/-.
