The Transformative Power of Prizes in Tanzania

The AgResults Tanzania Dairy Productivity Challenge Project, managed by Land O’Lakes Venture37, used a Pay-for-Results prize competition that ran from 2020-2024 to encourage private sector input suppliers (“competitors”) to sell productivity-increasing input bundles to smallholder farmers. The competition also motivated fodder wholesalers and input suppliers to produce, store, and sell fodder. In total, competitors received over $3.5 million in prizes and delivered more than 900,000 input bundles to nearly 85,000 farmers in the coastal regions of Tanzania. These changes, catalyzed by the Pay-for-Results model, have boosted smallholder farmers’ dairy productivity, increased incomes, and strengthened value chain relationships across the country.

This project is part of AgResults, a $152 million collaborative initiative between the governments of Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, the United States, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and the World Bank Group that uses prize competitions to incentivize the private sector to overcome market barriers and create lasting change.