The Southern Agricultural Growth Corridor of Tanzania (“SAGCOT”) has been established as a public private partnership with the objective to enhance Tanzania’s food security and accelerate agricultural transformation. The mandate of the partnership is to achieve these objectives by catalyzing responsible private sector led agricultural development. Partners commit to ensure that investments improve livelihoods of smallholder farmers and their communities, are sustainable in terms of natural resource use.

Tanzania has a long history of sugar cane production and it has now a prioritized national policy to attract foreign investments into modern and industrial scale sugar cane production. Between 2001 and 2010, the production of sugar in Tanzania increased from 130,000 Mt pa to 280,000 Mt pa. This has been principally due to the refurbishment of four old sugar cane estates and rejuvenation of sugar cane farms. However, production capacities in existing mills are now approaching their limit and annual consumption is at 500,000 MT pa and growing rapidly.

This case study is part of a Harvard Kennedy School CSR Initiative workstream on systemic approaches to creating business opportunity and development impact at scale. An initial framing paper, “Tackling Barriersto Scale: From Inclusive Business Modelsto Inclusive Business Ecosystems,” was published in September 2011. This document is one of several in-depth case studies subsequently conducted to generate knowledge and provide practical guidance on what such systemic approaches look like and how to structure and implement them.