IESC Announces Frank Pace Award Winners, Ganza Mfumya and Allyn Lamb
August 25, 2023
Volunteers have been a critical part of IESC’s mission since 1964. The Frank Pace Award, named for one of IESC’s founders, is given each year to a volunteer expert, or team of experts, who performed the most outstanding project in the previous year. 
This year’s recipients are Ganza Mfumya and Allyn Lamb, who volunteered with our USAID Farmer-to-Farmer Access to Finance Program in Tanzania. Ganza and Allyn provided tailored “learn by doing” agriculture financing and lending training to Equity Bank leadership and staff in Dar es Salaam, Morogoro, Mbeya, Arusha, and Zanzibar. Their work enhanced the bank staff’s knowledge and skills to develop and roll out an agricultural lending portfolio. They helped the bank review, design, and adopt agricultural sector-friendly lending policies, tools, procedures, and products. The volunteers’ support will help the bank further expand into the agriculture sector, enabling it to deploy credit to agricultural borrowers, especially women and youth.
As a result of Ganza’s and Allyn’s contributions, the bank expanded its agricultural lending, resulting in the disbursement of loans valued at US $6.8 million to smallholder farmers during the 2022-2023 farming season. This marked a 68% increase compared to the 2021-2022 season. Of this, US $4.7 million was provided to over 6,700 women borrowers.
Also, for the first time since 2012, Equity Bank made US $850,000 in loan disbursements for agricultural mechanization, which helps farmers increase their yields. Ganza’s and Allyn’s efforts in introducing agricultural lending tools and products have improved smallholder farmers’ incomes, livelihoods, and resilience throughout Tanzania. Further, they leave behind increased knowledge and skills among bank loan officers and staff, which will benefit farmers into the future.
