Tanzania’s Quest for Improved Nutrition, Food Security Receives A Boost from Farm Africa

TANZANIA is continuing to receive accelerated interventions from development partners to support the country’s efforts to improve nutrition and food security, as well as access to energy.

Farm Africa, a UK-based charity, is currently implementing at least seven projects across Tanzania aimed at supplementing the country’s efforts to scale up interventions in these sectors.

Dr David Ojwang Juma, the Country Director for Farm Africa Tanzania, told the publication during an exclusive interview that the Organisation works to grow more food, boost local incomes, and manage natural resources sustainably in order to lift Tanzania’s communities out of poverty.

“In Tanzania, we are currently implementing seven projects that impact nutrition, food security, market access for smallholder farmers and energy, but all are prioritising farmers,” he said.

The first project, he said, works to introduce and assist farmers in growing crops that improve nutrition at the household level while adopting climate-smart practices at the farm level.

“This intervention, which is funded by the Nourish Government, targets empowering smallholder farming households to grow nutritious crops, a development that plays a notable role in boosting Tanzania’s food security,” he explained.

On market access for local farmers, he said the international NGO had established a farmer-to-market alliance model, through which farmers are brought together to form “Farmers Service Centres.”

“Under these centres, we have introduced a range of useful services to help scale up their crop-yielding potential, including agricultural input distribution, mechanisation and extension services,” he noted.

Juma explained that, through this system, beneficiary farmers are provided with holistic services to help boost their farming interventions.

In Kilosa District, Morogoro Region, a pilot project has been launched to develop clean energy, he said.

“Through the project, we are working to harness energy from three different sources: wind, biogas and solar,” he said.

He observed that the three energy sources have been brought together to produce at least 80kW of electricity, which is being used to support processing operations at various Agricultural Marketing Cooperative Societies (AMCOS) in the district.

“The processing includes sunflower grain processing for the production of edible oil,” he added.

The Country Director appreciated the smooth cooperation that Farm Africa Tanzania has been receiving from the Government through the Ministry of Agriculture.

“We have a number of useful interventions to implement in Tanzania, and this is due to the conducive policies and friendly working environment established by the Government of Tanzania,” he said.