Inclusive Business Model Review: Endline Report for Union Service Stores Limited, Tanzania

Union Service Stores Limited (USSL) is a Tanzanian family-owned business that specialises in the production of animal feed, maize flour and agricultural inputs. USSL buys and aggregates grains such as maize, beans, barley and sorghum from farmers. To increase the proportion of maize sourced directly from smallholder farmers and reduce reliance on traders, USSL developed a smallholder inclusive sourcing model with three main objectives:

1.  Increasing farmer loyalty by incentivizing farmers to sell maize grain to USSL through their Farmer Organizations (FOs)
2. Leveraging on a service coalition to better serve farmers, especially with financing and input provision
   
3. Building the capacities of Farmer Organizations to offload some of the service provision activities from USSL
   

In 2019, IDH partnered with USSL to support them in implementing this smallholder inclusive sourcing model during a 4-year period.  

A baseline inclusive business model (formerly service delivery model) analysis was conducted which can be found here. At the end of this project, this endline analysis was conducted to:  

1. Provide actual project’s performance figures (at both farmer and company level) over the implementation period (’19 – ’23).
2. Reflect on the contextual and internal drivers influencing this performance.
   
3. Provide recommendations on emerging opportunities and risks to be managed to enhance sustainability.
   

Based on the outcome of this endline analysis, four main opportunities to pursue were identified:

1. Improve the organizational capacity, with a focus of the improvement areas that were identified during the organizational capacity assessment.
2. Improve the selection of partners in the service coalition and promote collaboration and data-sharing between these partners.
   
3. Improve procurement capacity in terms of working capital and storage, to be able to reach volume targets and improve farmer relations.
   
4. Deepen farmer engagement instead of scaling, to ensure and enhance the quality of the services provided to farmers
   

More details about the outcome of the analysis and the recommendations based on those outcomes, can be found in the report.