Empowering Smallholders To Access The Supply Chain

Black smallholder farmers are often excluded from the supply chain due to high barriers of entry. A fund established by Tiger Brands is now trying to address this problem. Mary-Jane Morifi, chief corporate affairs and sustainability officer at Tiger Brands, spoke to Jeandré van der Walt about the company’s plans to empower these farmers, as well as black suppliers and distributors.

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What is Tiger Brands’ enterprise supplier development fund, and why was it started? We established it to drive our enterprise and supplier development agenda. The fund, which is called the Dipuno Fund, will support black smallholder farmers, with particular focus on women, black suppliers providing goods and services within the supply chain, and black distributors supplying the market with Tiger products through its value chain.

Tiger Brands wants to help these farmers develop a solid asset base and liquidity to enable their operational and technical capability to deliver on market opportunities.

The Dipuno Fund was established against the backdrop of a serious lack of access to finance for many black suppliers of Tiger Brands (including smallholder farmers) and Tiger Brands distributors. This has had a negative impact on their ability to supply goods and services to Tiger Brands, and distribute Tiger Brands products.

With the Dipuno Fund, R100 million was set aside to provide corporate and micro-financing support, while a portion of this was invested in providing nonfinancial support, such as connectivity, office space, mentorship, training, and business and management systems.