Description:
The main objective of the paper is to explore the challenges facing Tanzanian farmers in
accessing entrepreneurship training, particularly to orange farmers in Muheza District, Tanga region. Tanzania. Orange farmers are experiencing various problems, including low productivity, access to markets, access to finance, poor farm management, poor post-harvest handling of oranges due to inadequate entrepreneurial knowledge and skills. Farmers must treat farming as a business. For a business to succeed, it requires entrepreneurship knowledge and skills which must be obtained from the training. Entrepreneurship knowledge and skills will enlighten farmers on how to market their products; create business networks and linkages; keep records of income, costs and expenditure; add value through orange processing, manage and grow their farming business. Despite the importance and recognition of farmers in the economic development, access to training is a major constraint among rural people in
developing countries. The study employed exploratory research design. In-depth focus group discussions were conducted with a total of 66 participants. The interviews were built around various themes including farmers’ access to entrepreneurship training, the challenges facing orange farmers in accessing entrepreneurship training and the strategies on how to overcome the identified challenges. Qualitative content analysis was used to analyse the data. The findings reveal numerous challenges categorized as institutional, situational, intentional and informational. To overcome the identified challenges various strategies were proposed to include using ICT tools like radio, television, internet and mobile phones in dissemination of entrepreneurship training.