A conversation between Beno Mgaya and Fredy Magima: proof that Mkulima kwa Mkulima scales
Beno Mgaya introduces the Lusitu Agribusiness Group’s farmer-to-farmer replication strategy through the story of Fredy Magima, a farmer from Butiama who discovered the model via social media and travelled south to learn.
BENO MGAYA: “Today I want to introduce you to this farmer here from Butiama. He found us through social media. He saw something about what we are doing and decided to come and learn. This is exactly what the Mkulima kwa Mkulima programme is meant to do: reach farmers beyond our region.”
Beno Mgaya, chairman of Lusitu Agribusiness Group and founding voice of AGCOT’s farmer-to-farmer extension model, is not speaking to a training audience. He is standing in an avocado grove, the trees heavy with fruit, speaking to Fredy Magima himself and explaining why this moment matters.
Fredy Magima came from Butiama, in the northwest, hunting for answers. He had seen a post on social media. Instead of scrolling past, he asked questions. He tracked down a phone number. He found Tullah Mloge, AGCOT’s Head of Partnerships and Communications and Agriculture Economist, who made the institutional connection to Beno and Lusitu.
FREDY MAGIMA: “I saw this on social media. I looked for Tullah Mloge and found her number through connections. When I explained to her what I wanted to learn, she helped me. She introduced me to Beno, and that is how I got the chance to come here.”
Within days, Fredy was on a bus heading south from Butiama to the highlands of Njombe and Iringa, a journey that would rewrite his understanding of what is possible for his region.
The Lusitu Proof
His journey took him through Njerela, Rudewa and deeper into the Ihemi Cluster, each site a classroom. Beno walked the fields with him. Other farmers showed him their harvests.
The numbers are stark: Lusitu transformed itself from a burial society into a commercial powerhouse in just over a decade. Farmers now earn between TZS 15 million and TZS 20 million per season, compared with TZS 200,000 before the model took hold. Potato yields climbed from 5 tonnes per acre to over 200 bags per acre. Avocado farmers are harvesting 300 kg per tree at TZS 2,500 per kilogram, generating over TZS 400 million in a single season.
FREDY: “The difference is clear. Here, farmers work together. They share knowledge. They have markets waiting for them. Back home in Butiama, we are still struggling with individual farming. We are surviving, not thriving.”
What struck Magima most was not just the harvests. It was recognising that the Mkulima kwa Mkulima model Lusitu pioneered, deliberately designed, according to AGCOT’s documentation, to “export to other regions”, was now reaching his doorstep. The model had proved itself. Now it was travelling.
Why This Moment Matters
BENO: “Many people in our region did not know what was possible. We had to show them. That is why we designed the Mkulima kwa Mkulima model: not to have AGCOT come and train you. Instead, farmers teach farmers. One farmer convinces another. That is how knowledge spreads. When Fredy goes back to Butiama and tells his people what he has seen, that is more powerful than any government programme.”
The logic is simple but profound: Lusitu did not become successful because it had better land or external subsidy. It succeeded because farmers took ownership and peer mentoring replaced top-down extension. This model is now being exported, not imposed, to other regions. Fredy Magima is that replication in motion.
FREDY: “Back home, we wait. We wait for government programmes. We wait for ideas to come to us. But here, people are building things themselves. Farmers are talking to farmers. They are making real money. Why should we sit at home when people from Los Angeles are coming to invest here? Why should we, the youth of Butiama, not do the same?”
The Return Home
FREDY: “We started in poverty, in groups that felt like burial societies. But we were advised to take courage in enterprise. That is what AGCOT is showing us through Lusitu: not to accept our situation, but to act.
“I have seen colleagues who spent their whole lives waiting. They waited for government jobs. They counted down to pensions. But when the pension came, what could it actually buy? Real wealth comes from what you build with your own hands. That is what I am going back to do.”
The contrast in his thinking is sharp. Poverty is not destiny; it is a choice masked as circumstance. The Lusitu farmers chose differently.
BENO: “When Fredy goes back to Butiama, he does not go as an extension officer. He goes as proof. He is a farmer who left his region, learned from peers, and is choosing to invest what he has learned into his community. That is the Mkulima kwa Mkulima model working exactly as it should.”
The Blueprint Travels
What this conversation reveals is that AGCOT’s replication strategy is not left to chance or goodwill alone. It is operationalised through senior figures like Tullah Mloge, Head of Partnerships and Communications, whose role is precisely to bridge farmer-to-farmer connections across regions. When Fredy tracked down her number and she facilitated his connection to Beno, that was AGCOT’s partnership strategy in motion: intentional, deliberate, institutional.
The model requires peer teachers like Beno Mgaya willing to open their fields and share what they have learned. And it requires strategic connectors like Tullah who understand both the institutional framework (AGCOT’s mandate) and the farmer realities (what works in each region).
Fredy saw a social media post. He tracked down Tullah Mloge’s number. She opened an institutional door. Beno welcomed him and showed him what farmer-led agriculture looks like when it scales. Now Fredy returns to Butiama with a mission: replicate this across his region using the same method that transformed Lusitu.
“We came back to this corridor in 2015 when everything was small,” AGCOT CEO Geoffrey Kirenga reflected during the March 2026 Board visit to Ihemi. “What you see now, value chains that are focused and performing, local and international investment, is what sustained, multi-stakeholder commitment looks like.”
The Lusitu model did not stay confined to Njombe. Through strategic partnerships brokered by figures like Tullah Mloge, and through farmers like Fredy who choose to invest in peer learning, it is spreading. And that is the whole point of farmer-to-farmer learning: it travels on trust and aligned institutional strategy, not on programme budgets alone.
Publication Information
Primary speakers: Beno Mgaya (Chair, Lusitu Agribusiness Group); Fredy Magima (farmer, Butiama)
Strategic facilitator: Tullah Mloge (Agriculture Economist, AGCOT Head of Partnerships and Communications, Chair of AGCOT Editorial Committee)
Cluster: Ihemi (Iringa and Njombe)
Key theme: Mkulima kwa Mkulima travels through institutional partnerships, peer networks and farmer agency
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