A few words on agriculture

Last Mon-Wed, I had my first proper business trip to Kilosa District, Morogoro Region.

It's about 3hrs' drive to Morogoro town, then you go on unsurfaced, dirt road for about 2? or less than 2hrs, then you get to this little town called Kilosa.


What was I there for? I was with a mission that came from the Headquarter to collect information on agricultural irrigation schemes, in order to decide whether to contribute to the pool fund for irrigation in Tanzania.

In Tanzania, it is said that about 80% of the population works in agriculture sector (only accounts for about 25% of GDP). However, only 3% (the data might be a few yrs old) of the farmlands are irrigated and the rest relies on natural rain for cultivation.

Tanzania has rainy and dry seasons, now it is a dry season. And since I came just over a month ago, I was caught in a rain perhaps... like 4 times?

It's a pretty sunny country. Good for me, but not for farmers without irrigation.


So the need to build irrigation schemes is pretty obvious. Now, can the money be used effectively if provided?

Oh, by the way, those canals (drawing the water from nearby river to the land with no access to water source) on the pictures above/on the right are the typical "irrigation" stuff we mean.

People from Kilosa district council had a wish list of over 30 candidate sites for construction of new irrigation scheme, including a plan to build a small-scale dam. Very ambitious. Rather too ambitious, when you only have 6? technicians to supervise them. And apparently the lack of human resources in irrigation is acute not only in Kilosa, but all over the country.

So the current situation is like this: there is a massive need to improve irrigation (which also aligns with Kilimo Kwanza -Agriculture First - policy of the government), but no money, no adequate human resources. Even if we decided to contribute, a careful arrangement of technical cooperation and capacity development projects as a kind of side-support will be more than crucial...

This is just one problem among others in Agriculture sector, which is merely one (well, important tho) sector of a country... phew, thinking about the whole development path Tanzania will need to go through, it's challenging and exciting. But at the same time, it's too complicated, and makes me feel kinda dizzy...