| Moshi Irrigation Project |
Recently, policy and decision
makers, some of them senior government officials from the Ministry of
Agriculture, Food Security and Cooperatives, Ministry of Water, FAO, senior
researchers, NGO’s, and media attended a closing workshop on the AgWater solutions national dialogue process in
Morogoro region, during which they also mapped the way forward.
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| Wanawake Kwanza (Women First) growers association in Maza village, Morogoro |
AgWater Solutions, is a project
funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and it is helping to improve the livelihoods for
smallholder farmers by focusing on agricultural water management (AWM)
solutions—not just technologies, such as water harvesting and drip irrigation,
but also the necessary supporting policies, institutions and business models.
The project is collaboration among researchers, policymakers, investors and
implementers at international, national and regional levels.
According to Dr. Victor Congo,
the national dialogue facilitator, a series of consultations and awareness
events accompanied the research activities (from 2009 until 2011). From mid
2011, the project started a dialogue process- engaging with partners and
stakeholders to share and fine-tune the research results while disseminating
the same for maximum impact.
It was actually a platform to
mark the end of the intensive dialogue process of which precipitated the
creation of a new AWM stakeholder engagement phase in Tanzania through creation
of an AWM forum in Tanzania, the AWM+.
Dr. Kongo says among the main
objectives of the workshop was to reflect on the dialogue process and map the
way forward. Specifically, the workshop had three key purposes. To reflect and
discuss on the major findings from AgWater Solutions project in Tanzania, to reflect
on the AWM dialogue process in Tanzania and discuss the possible way forward
for sustainable stakeholder engagement on AWM in Tanzania.
Some key lights of the workshop
were:
Tanzania has 29.4 million
hectares with different suitability levels of irrigation potential. However,
only 1.1 percent of this land is currently under irrigation.
Various institutions in Tanzania
are engaged in AWM issues. However, flow of information and engagement between
and occasionally within institutions is limited. Thus, there is an urgent need
to create an AWM forum in Tanzania where different stakeholders can freely
engage and discuss AWM issues.
It was realized that dialogue is
an opportunity to influence research, investment and policies for development
by bridging different spheres of stakeholders.
The AWM project only studied four
solutions in Tanzania. However, there are several other key AWM solutions which
were not covered some of which have geographical inclination. Thus, there is a
need to document such solutions and provide investment pathways as well. There
are several ongoing initiatives in Tanzania on which the proposed AWM forum can
be anchored. An example of such initiatives is the ongoing engagement between
the directorate of land use in the Ministry of Agriculture and the Department
of Agricultural Engineering in Sokoine University.
The newly created AWM forum needs
to be facilitated and anchored on actionable plans for sustainability. The AWM
dialogue process has had significant impact on policy orientation in the
country. An example is the significant budgetary increase in the Ministry of
Agriculture in 2012/13 budget.
In his key note address by Eng.
Futakamba Mbogo, Deputy Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Agriculture, Food
Security and Cooperatives which was read and presented on his behalf by Eng.
Richard Shetto, the Director of Mechanization from the Ministry of Agriculture,
Food Security and Cooperatives he said Agriculture is an important economic
activity in Tanzania as it contributes 24 percent of the GDP, currently
accounting for 95 percent of the food consumed in Tanzania and 30 percent of
export earnings and most importantly absorbing about 75 percent of the total
labour force
He explained that agriculture in
Tanzania is still dominated by small-scale farmers cultivating small plots from
0.2 to 2 hectares and using poor technologies with 64 percent using hand hoe,
24 percent on ox-plough and only 12 percent on tractors
According to him, agriculture in
Tanzania is heavily reliant on rain-fed production and suffers from
seasonality, and unreliability of rainfall and is characterized by low crop
yields and production level mostly at subsistence level
“Tanzania is endowed with huge
arable land area estimated at 44 million ha and currently only 10.1 million ha
or 23 percent is cultivated, the total potential irrigable area is estimated at
29.4 million hectares with different suitability levels with 2.3 million ha of
high irrigation development potential, 4.8 million ha of medium potential and
22.3 million ha of low development potential” he said.
He said that the government has
formulated various National Policies, Plans and Strategies which recognize the
importance of irrigated agriculture towards the increase in food security and
the economy at both household and National levels: Tanzania Development Vision
(TDV) 2025; the National Strategy for Growth and Reduction of Poverty-NSGRP
(MKUKUTA) II, MDG 2015, National Irrigation Policy 2010; the Agricultural
Sector Development Strategy (ASDS) 2001; the National Irrigation Master Plan
(NIMP) 2002 and the Public Private Partnership (PPP) Policy. To foster the
implementation of the above national strategies, in 2009 the government
launched the KILIMO KWANZA initiative.
“The Government’s strategy on
irrigation development stresses on attainment of national food security,
increased productivity and profitability in agriculture, improvement of
existing traditional irrigation schemes and construction of new ones especially
in the high development potential areas, improvement of irrigation schemes
based on water harvesting technology in climatically marginal regions, construction
of small, medium and strategic large scale dams for irrigation development and
exploitation of groundwater for irrigation development in areas rich in
groundwater and promotion of water saving technologies such as sprinkler, drip
irrigation systems coupled with use of energy sources like wind power and solar
power for pumping water for irrigation” he said.
Commenting on challenges, he said
that irrigation is faced with a number of problems, including heavy reliance on
the run-off-river water abstractions for gravity-fed irrigation schemes, low
irrigation water user efficiency, weak farmers’ organizations and poor water
user efficiency. He also named other challenges as low or minimal investment in
irrigation research, inadequate investment for irrigation infrastructure,
inadequate number of irrigation professionals, and inadequate capacity of small
holder farmers to invest in the infrastructure for their irrigation systems.
He suggests that there is a need
to nvest in multi-purpose water infrastructure especially targeting smallholder
farmer, adopt and implement integrated water resources development and
management for sustainable and accelerated socio-economic development and
strengthen human and technological capacity of institutions responsible for
water resources development and agricultural water management.
However, in their presentations,
Guido Santini from FAO in Rome on the overview of AWM project in Tanzania,
including research results, he said that apart from Tanzania, the project is
also implemented in two Provinces in India, and four other countries in Africa
namely Ethiopia, Zambia, Ghana, and Burkina Faso.
Since the start of the project in
2009 until June, the project had consulted more than 20,000 people in all
countries. The target is to reach 65,000 people in 20 years to come.
He said the project partners are
SEI, FAO, IWMI, IFPRI, and IDE, while local partners are SUA and UDSM.
“The project started in 2009 with
the 1st phase focusing on research. The main goal for the research component
was to investigate on AWM solutions and related possible investment pathways in
the country including associated costs and benefits” he said.
.
The AWM Solutions were defined as
measures that boost the uptake of AWM (knowledge, policies, markets, and
financing) and contributes to livelihoods of smallholder farmers. The solutions
need to benefit women and men, be cost-effective, and have potential to be
out-scaled while addressing resource sustainability. In Tanzania the project involved in engaging,
synthesizing, and strategizing for wide adoption of the solutions that showed
promise of contributing to the livelihood improvement of people.
Giodo further explained that in
Tanzania the main focus of the project with regard to Agwater solutions were
Community managed river diversions, water lifting technologies, and conservation
agriculture.
Mapping criteria on the potential
areas for investment in AWM in Tanzania was based on physical availability of
water (rainfall, rivers, and GW), presence of target beneficiaries (rural
population and rural poverty), and areas where water is a limiting factor for
livelihoods
Community Managed River Diversions
The improved community managed
river diversion was found to be an AWM solution suited to areas with market
accessibility and close to perennial rivers. However, there is a need for
capacity building for better management practices.
Water lifting devices
Biophysical mapping of areas
suitable for using water lifting devices was based on market access, presence
of shallow Groundwater (fluvial soils), and surface water or rainfall exceeding
300mm/year.
Research findings showed that the
time spent to irrigate one hectare per year were 267hours for motorized pumps,
2730hrs for buckets and watering cans and 2510hours for treadle pumps. AWM
solution pathway for increasing the use of motor pumps for irrigation in
Tanzania were named as availability of credits and flexible loans, government
credit assurance to SACCOs, Pump rental programmes, information to help farmers
choose and maintain pumps, and training of users to maximize benefits.
In-situ Water Harvesting (WH)
The mapping of potential areas
for in-situ WH technologies was based on Aridity index and topography.
Benefits of in-situ WHT were
found to be increased crop yields and production in low rainfall years, reduced
sedimentation downstream, and groundwater recharge.
Strategies that are needed to
enhance the in-situ WHT are training farmers using demonstration plots and
farmer exchange visits, training of trainer farmers, and formation of farmer
groups to enhance up-scaling, and information sharing/dissemination.
It was noted that enhancement of
the AWM solutions requires rethinking about the AWM policies and linkages.
There is a need to rethink on rural electrification policies to support
agriculture as well.
Presenting his paper on the
dialogue process in the AWM Solutions project in Tanzania, Dr. Victor Kongo said that four regions were
selected for regional dialogue events i.e Morogoro /Iringa, Dodoma/Singida,
Kilimanjaro/Arusha and Dar es Salaam. The scale of engagement ranged from
individual, field, regional, and National level
He said the mode of engagement
adopted in the dialogue process depends on the stakeholder and prevailing
circumstances but ranges from communicating through phone calls to
seminars/workshops. The first dialogue workshop was held in Dar Es Salaam which
mainly was aimed at setting the stage for dialogue engagement, identifying key
stakeholders to engage, propose a dialogue plan and sharing results of the AWM
findings in Tanzania.
A dialogue workshop was held in
Moshi (18th November, 2011) and was aimed at carrying dialogue at the regional
level, identifying dialogue initiatives in the region, validation of project
results at regional scale and strategies for engaging private sector and micro
finance in the region.
However, another dialogue meeting
with Southern Agricultural Growth Corridor of Tanzania (SAGCOT) was held on the
13th of December, 2011. This meeting focused on building a collaborative
framework between AWM project and SAGCOT, sharing information such as
investment models of AWM project and SAGCOT.
“On the 13th of February, 2012,
the dialogue process team took the initiatives to meet parliamentarians in
Dodoma, the committee…..with the aim of sharing with them the project results
and key messages for Tanzania, consult with the parliament committee on Policy
Outlook on AWM, proposition on Policy alignment with proposed solutions” he
said.
The result that is that MPs were
very pleased and promised to work on influencing the government to increase
budget allocation in the Ministry of Agriculture with the view to support
implementation and uptake of measures to increase production for smallholder
farmers through better agricultural water management practices” he said.
.
He said, there is a need to
continuously facilitate the AWM stakeholder engagement process for better
results.
Ends.
By Mirror digest reporter
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