Expected impact

By the end of the program in March 2011, the RIU program in Tanzania expects to have achieved the following:

Indigenous poultry innovation platform

At household level

• More than 30,000 poor farming households will be keeping improved indigenous chickens as a commercial activity, i.e. about 30,000 rural commercial poultry enterprises will be operational.
• In these 30,000 households, the livelihoods of about 180,000 Tanzanians as beneficiaries (family members) will have improved from living on less than a US$1 a day to an annual income of about US$ 1000 a year (or about US$3 a day).

The 30,000 household members will have gained the following capacities:

• both technical skills and financial capacities to raise and benefit from around 100 chickens
• to order and procure day-old-chicks from different hatcheries in the country
• to specify types of vaccines, veterinary drugs and feeds needed for the enterprise, and demand and pay for them from private service providers
• sufficient knowledge, skills and practical experience in poultry feeding, disease control and management and general poultry husbandry
• to produce or procure poultry feeds from different sources, either from the market or from own sources.
• to speculate, approach, bargain and participate in the local chicken market at profit
• to identify system blockages and search for and apply innovative solutions to unblock them.

At service providers level

• There will be privately owned hatcheries producing indigenous chicks at a commercial scale in Tanzania where interested poultry keepers can order and buy chicks at anytime and at volumes they want. By the end of the program, there should be at least 20,000 indigenous chicks released in the market every week.
• There will be at least one feed supplier and one veterinary drugs agent in every district operating at ward level even in the remotest villages. (Currently their business volume has tripled as a result of the program support and the growing number of poultry keepers demanding their services. Farmers are now working with them directly).
• More than 30,000 farming households will have access to extension services provided at household level for about 30 days continuously by experts deployed to live with the household members and give them practical training. The model has also been adopted by the Government and out-scaled to other areas where students from Agricultural Training colleges are deployed to farming households every year as part of their field practical training or internship after graduation.

Farm mechanization innovation platform

At household level

• More than 30% of the 277,330 households in the four targeted Districts in Morogoro, will be using tractor hire services and other modern farming tools as part of phasing out the hand hoe and drudgery in farming
• At least 90 % of all villages in Ulanga, Kilombero, Kilosa and Mvomero districts will have been made aware of the existing new modern farm implements and more than 70 % of households will have knowledge of where to hire or purchase farm implement tools.
• More than 30% of households will have increased their acreage by 30% due to the decreased cost for ploughing and other farming services as a result of bundling of ploughing demands
• Farmers are aware of proper acreage measurements and are using them when hiring ploughing services.

At village level

• 60% of targeted villages have a mechanism of communicating their bundled demands to farm implements owners in the areas.
• Every village in all districts have a farm implement catalogue with images of new modern farming tools, their usage, specifications and where they can be found.
• Every mechanization officer in the each district who has been through a refresher course and is aware of the bundling of demand concept, is following up with the villagers to ensure the bundling of demand concept is strengthened and expanded to include other needed services.

At service provider level

• In all program villages, tractor owners and farmers are communicating and doing business together. All villages have the names and contacts of at least 10 reliable tractor owners that have made agreements with farmers for provision of ploughing services
• Tractors and other farm implements are reliably being maintained and serviced regardless of the distances to the townships. Every districts' major spare part dealer has agents servicing every ward and has built a business relationship and, where necessary, agents have credit facilities established with the spare part dealer

Tractor owners and mechanics have formed organised groups for the purpose of meeting the demand of services requests.

Information and communication innovation platform

Activities

• The information generation and dissemination model is working to address information needs for innovation, i.e. information needs are identified and the business plan for the model is being operationalised to produce content, repackage and disseminate it to relevant target groups to facilitate decision making processes and advisory services.
• At least five sectors (agriculture, information and communication technology, education - academia, non-governmental, private for- profit and public sector) are involved in the different parts of the system.
• 20 Print [1], 10 radio [2], 3 television [3] and 2 electronic media have taken the content and disseminated it to the target audiences through their programs, newsletters, newspapers, websites etc
• At least 5 private sector organisations are working to support different parts of the system.
• Through the system's business plan, the program will have mobilised the equivalent of about UK £30,000 from the private sector partners to support the second round of information generation and dissemination.
• At least 10,000 copies on one theme have been produced and disseminated to households by March 2010.
• More than 50,000 farming households in Tanzania have accessed information produced by the system through different medium, i.e. radio, TV, print and electronic.
• Institutional capacity - information and communication capacity of at least 4 strategic partner institutions and actors in collecting, analysing, translating, repackaging and disseminating agricultural information into languages and formats suitable for target groups has been strengthened.

Outputs

• Two platforms established through which research gets into use
• Strengthened links between research generators and research users
• Learning lessons and developing institutional arrangements for the continued flow of research from generators to users

Outcomes

• Relationships and ways of working developed between actors in the innovation system
• Efficiency of farmer increased

Impact

• Strengthened overall agricultural growth and production leading to increased incomes and employment opportunities reducing overall poverty levels especially rural poverty.

RIU Tanzania priority area	Impact at scale	Number of people benefiting (based on 5 people per households)
Indigenous poultry innovation platform	30,000 rural commercial poultry enterprises established: income will increase from US$ 1 to US$3 a day	150,000 people
Information and communication system innovation platform	50,000 farming households in Tanzania have accessed information produced by the system through different medium i.e. radio, TV, print and electronic	250,000 people
Farm mechanization platform	More than 83,000 households will be using tractor hire services and other modern farming tools, increasing their acreage by 30%	415,000 people

1   Print media is the largest advertising medium with over 350 registered publications in Tanzania, including newspapers, magazines, periodicals, and newsletters (TCRA 2008)
2   There are about 47 radio stations in Tanzania, including community radio stations in different regional towns (TCRA, 2008).
3   There are 29 television stations in Tanzania, however only 6% of households owned a TV set by 2006 (TCRA, 2007)