Training Tanzanian Businesses for Success

New business mentoring groups in rural Western Tanzania are forming with guidance from Partners Worldwide's affiliate Grace Community Development & Education (GCDE). GCDE’s primary focus is bringing a godly perspective to developing small businesses and sustainable smallholder agriculture. GCDE‘s North American Affiliate is Tanzanian Christian Business Partners (TCBP), which works to provide the support and funding.

In partnership with Partners Worldwide, GCDE brought expertise from the neighboring East African country of Uganda to help lay a strong foundation for future growth and sustainability. The businesspeople participated in an intensive four day business- training program that culminated in the formation of business plans for about 45 businesspeople. Livingstone Mukasa, a businessman and trainer from Kampala, Uganda spent two weeks in Tanzania, facilitating two sessions of the training in Sumbawanga and Mbeya to provide small business operators with new insights on running a successful business as a person of faith.

Through the interactive training model, business people studied, shared and developed plans for their own businesses with new understanding in areas such as mission or goals, cost analysis, marketing, record keeping and business as mission. The participants returned to their own businesses with renewed enthusiasm and bright hope for the future.

Businesspeople who attended gave positive reviews of the trainings.  “This was a wonderful seminar because I was running my business with no business plan or record keeping,” says Frank Kyando, who runs retail businesses in hardware and clothing. He continued, “The seminar has given insight on how to make my business different from others and from where it was before the seminar.”

Charles Magigisi shared, “I have learned many things such as: caring for customers, savings and loans, the relationship between my business family and friends, breakeven point and business planning.  It has changed the way I view the importance of my business to the society and my life. Experience is the primary teacher but education is the higher level teacher.”

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