Tuesday morning. We are leaving the city life of Arusha and are heading to one of the most remote areas of Tanzania. Our destination is Loliondo, the land of the Maasai. With a pick-up full of stationary, exercise books and cooking pots we are heading to supply six primary schools in the district. It is a long but beautiful drive. When we’re crossing the plain grassland between Serengeti and Ngorogoro, we are surrounded by thousands and thousands of wildebeasts and zebras. We stop the car and all four of us are just looking, no one says a word. It is absolutely breathtaking.

This morning, on my way to the office, I passed by an international school. From behind the fence, I saw the blue & white of the school uniforms and I heard the sound of children playing and running before school starts. I smiled, and at the same time my thoughts went back to the figures I’ve read last week. Tanzania has one of the lowest enrollment rates of Africa.

Over 80% of the people of Tanzania are farmers, most of them smallholder farmers. They are dependent on their harvest, the rain and the market. A poor harvest will not just affect the farmer and his family, but has a direct impact on national food security levels and even on the country’s GDP. The upside of this story is that any improvements in agriculture will have a direct significant impact on a large number of people. Not only food security will improve, but also livelihood and even education levels will improve remarkably. There is only one question, how to improve this important but complicated sector? We cannot promise rain, but we can help farmers to improve and sell their harvest.