Business and Finance
In this investment area, Musika focuses on improving the functionality of the agricultural supply chain through building business management capacity, upgrading management systems, integrating digital solutions and improving access to financial products and services for key actors in the agricultural market.
Within the business and finance investment area, Musika focuses on the following strategies that tackle multiple constraints in the smallholder-relevant agricultural supply chain:
Small business development: By working directly with small rural agribusinesses, Musika supports the delivery of better intermediation services to large agribusiness partners and a range of market services to smallholders that assist farmers to improve and diversify their production systems.
Musika also has a strategic interest in identifying and working with those smaller companies adding value to agricultural commodities in provincial off-line-of-rail Zambia that offer combination of:
a) A direct or indirect market opportunity to smallholder farmers in their locality (while direct market opportunities coupled with other market services has been the exclusive criteria of Musika in the past, the following three criteria are now of equal importance)
b) Non-farm employment opportunities for rural Zambians
c) Wealth creation and skill development and retention in rural Zambia
d) Benefits to the surrounding local economy in terms of the ‘last mile’ distribution of food and a corresponding impact on food prices.
Financial access: Musika stimulates the development of a wide range of appropriate and affordable financial services integrated into commercial relationships between agribusinesses, small rural businesses and smallholder farmers. Financial services can be offered by either conventional financial institutions or through the supply chain.
Promoting digital solutions: Musika supports the technology industry to identify and test digital solutions that can potentially create efficiencies and improve commercial relationships between all levels in the agricultural supply chain. Specific efforts and technical resource has been dedicated towards understanding the ‘pain points’ in the agricultural supply chain and identifying digital solutions that can create efficiencies and improve commercial relationships between all levels in the supply chain.
Structured markets: Musika supports private market systems that offer structured trade, transparency and security and an equitable distribution of the profits of agricultural trade through the supply chain. Investments that have the potential to offer such benefits and that Musika will support as opportunities arise include, but are not limited to:
a. Warehouse Receipts and Commodity Exchange Trade
b. Horticultural Wholesaling Markets
c. Livestock Auctions:
