The World Bank funded Zimbabwe Emergency Agricultural Input Project is supporting 300,000 smallholder farmers in the communal lands to reduce their dependence on food aid and strengthen their capacity to meet their own consumption. 
One component of the project is to improve access to maize seed to vulnerable households, through direct distribution using a network of Non Governmental Organisations (NGOs) who work within the local community and selected retail outlets in exchange for vouchers provided to the vulnerable farmers.
Whilst an emergency requirement, as seed was required for planting in December, the procurement had to follow the World Bank guidelines. Crown Agents worked closely with the World Bank and GRM International (the Government's Representative) to ensure that contracts were awarded in three months, an exercise which would ordinarily take eight to ten months.
Crown Agents were also contracted to oversee the quality of the seed and distribution. We worked strictly with the supplier, one of Zimbabwe's largest seed companies, and the NGOs to manage a tight delivery schedule which succesfully delivered 2767.56MT of maize seed to Oxfam (Mushumbi Pools), Catholic Relief Services (Tsholotsho and Chimanimani), German-Agro Action (Nkayi), Mercy Corps (Buhera), Concern World Wide (Nemaungwe) and Action Aid-Hwedza. A further 279MT were distributed through the retail voucher system in the districts of Chikomba, Shamva, Murehwa, Bindura and Goromonzi.