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Project ID: 1273
Agricultural Services Support Programme Building on ten years' experience in the United Republic of Tanzania as to the nature and magnitude of the technological, organizational and financial constraints facing poor farmers, the programme will support a national vision and strategy of pro-poor extension consistent with the goals of the poverty reduction strategy paper and the Millennium Development Goals. Following a sector-wide approach with basket funding, the programme will restructure and reorganize the existing extension and research system following a decentralized and market-oriented approach. This will involve increased beneficiary control over policies, agendas and financial resources, which will allow farmers and their organizations to obtain cost-effective services from a range of service providers. Three groups of beneficiaries have been identified: some 480 000 farmers who will benefit from empowerment and improved services in the 42 fast-track districts; 317 000 farmers in the 78 other districts where complementary programmes will provide empowerment; and 734 000 farmers who will benefit from investments in improved client-oriented agricultural research funded through Zonal Agricultural Research Funds. The total number of direct beneficiaries from these three sources for the mainland programme is therefore expected to reach 1.53 million farmers, or 575 000 households, equivalent to approximately 10% of the country's total farming population. For Zanzibar it is estimated that 48 000 smallholder farmers and fisherfolk will benefit from the programme with priority being given to women and marginalized groups. The programme will help introduce pluralistic institutional approaches to articulate the demand for, and delivery of, pro-poor extension, research and information services, assuring and enhancing their quality, strengthening partnerships between farmers and the private and public-sectors, and decentralizing programme planning and implementation arrangements under client control. All this will be achieved by (a) empowering farmers/farmers' organizations through provision of knowledge, information, technology, financing and organizational strengthening to enable them to improve their lives; (b) improving the delivery of services through reform, rationalization and support of both public and private agricultural service providers, capacity building and training, and by allowing clients more control over resource allocation and management; and (c) providing mechanisms to ensure coordination, quality control, participatory monitoring and evaluation, and impact assessment at various levels to enhance programme efficiency and effectiveness. Loan Amount SDR 17.05 million (equivalent to approximately USD 25.0 million), of which SDR 13.9 million (equivalent to approximately USD 20.4 million) for the Mainland Sub-Programme, and SDR 3.15 million (equivalent to approximately USD 4.6 million) for the Zanzibar Sub-Programme on highly concessional terms Total programme cost: USD 221.2 million Cooperating Institution: United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS) |
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| Project ID: 1166
Agricultural Marketing Systems Development Programme The programme will assist the Government in bringing about a comprehensive change in the agricultural marketing subsector with the objective of making rural markets work better and empowering smallholders within them. The programme will: (a) strengthen about 1 000 PGs to enable them to have a better bargaining position and more leverage on policy formulation, identification of marketing opportunities and price negotiations for both inputs and outputs; (b) assist the Government in rationalizing the existing policies relating to regulation, taxation, the exchange rate and so on, so that it can contribute to improved marketing system efficiency as a whole; (c) improve market infrastructures through construction and rehabilitation of 700 km of rural roads, 200 km of access roads and 30 market centres, and through financing for post-harvest facilities; (d) strengthen capacity of the Ministry of Cooperatives and Marketing (MCM) to collect, compile and disseminate agricultural marketing information; (e) help PGs, GIs, traders and processors to access inventory and capital loans from the commercial banks as required for promotion of marketing activities; and (f) establish and strengthen both vertical and horizontal linkages among PGs, GIs, processors, local marketing chains and exporters. Given the multidimensional and holistic nature of the programme, with major emphasis given to rationalization of overall marketing policies and improvements of related infrastructures, it is expected that all rural market participants will benefit from the programme. The major programme support will be directed to: (a) the smallholder farmer members of producer groups (PGs) and grass-roots institutions (GIs), who have on average less than 2 ha of cultivable land and income generally below the poverty line; (b) small-scale traders and processors operating in rural areas; and (c) medium-scale agribusiness entrepreneurs who have demonstrated their ability to handle significant volumes of smallholder produce. The larger part of the benefits will be captured by small farmers. Small and itinerant traders mostly women will also benefit greatly from the programme. A highly decentralized participatory and consultative process, led from the grass roots and coordinated by the MCM and the Prime Ministers Office, guided the programme design during all stages of the project development cycle. The following institutional mechanisms and modalities will be used to secure participation during implementation: (a) the PGs and GIs savings and credit cooperatives, savings and credit associations, etc. will be organized and supported according to a demand-driven approach; (b) resources will be provided to develop ownership, support and implementation of policies at both the district and national levels, with participation of beneficiaries, civil-society organizations and government, through dialogue, lobbying and public-awareness campaigns and discussions; (c) specific measures and criteria will be used to maximize the participation of women in PGs and GIs, including in the decision-making processes; and (d) provision will be made for a participatory impact monitoring and evaluation assessment system that can address the beneficiaries priority concerns and be used and applied for assessing performance and impacts of their respective enterprise operations. Loan amount: SDR 12.95 million (equivalent to approximately USD 16.34 million) on highly concessional terms Total programme costs are estimated at USD 42.30 million Cooperating Institution: United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS) |
| Project ID: 1151
Rural Financial Services Programme The overall aim of this nine-year IFAD-initiated programme is to further rationalize and strengthen grass-roots MFIs to enable the rural poor to access their services in an effective and efficient manner. The specific objectives of the programme are to: (i) support the design and development of a comprehensive grass-roots-level financial system owned, operated and managed by the members of MFIs, based on the principles of private banks; (ii) enhance MFIs technical, operational and outreach capacity to provide financial serv ices to the rural poor for productive and income-generating activities; (iii) empower the rural poor by removing legal, regulatory and social barriers in order to ensure their active participation in MFIs and provide them with an opportunity to enhance their business and technical skills; and (iv) strengthen the financial instruments, skills and capital base of grass-roots MFIs and financial intermediaries. Finally, the programme will assist the Government in consolidating and deepening its ongoing policy and institutional reforms for rural microfinance services, and in developing a sustainable rural financial system that can be integrated into a gradually liberalized financial sector. The programme, which will be concentrated primarily in areas where IFADs initial pilot experience has provided some demonstrable results, will initially cover the regions of Dodoma, Mbeya and Kilimanjaro during the first-phase intervention. Innovative features: The programme reflects the Funds renewed focus on building national-level strategic partnerships in support of poverty alleviation and growth. It complements a wide range of donor activities in rural financial services development, while also supporting the Central Bank of Tanzania in establishing a regulatory framework for microfinance. Loan amount: SDR 12.8 million (approximately USD 16.3 million) on highly concessional terms under the FLM. Total programme costs: Estimated at USD 23.8 million, of which USD 2.2 million will be provided by Switzerland, USD 2.2 million by the OPEC Fund, USD 2.7 million by the Government and USD 372 000 by the beneficiaries. Cooperating institution: UNOPS. |
| Project ID: 1086
Participatory Irrigation Development Programme Building on the lessons of the Smallholder Development Project for Marginal Areas and the positive experience gained through its participatory irrigation component, the overall goal of this six-year IFAD-initiated programme is to improve smallholder incomes and household food security on a sustainable basis. Its purpose is to enhance the institutional, organizational and technical ability of farmers, the private sector, NGOs, civil-society organizations and government institutions to develop smallholder irrigation throughout the marginal areas of the country's central plateau, which is comprised of parts of the dry zones of six regions. To achieve these objectives, the programme will: - increase the availability/reliability of water through improved low-cost water control systems; - raise agricultural productivity by providing improved agricultural extension services responsive to farmers' needs; - improve the capacity of stakeholders (farmers, private-sector service providers and the Government) to construct, operate and maintain simple, low-cost schemes efficiently and sustainably; - build institutional capacity to enhance smallholder irrigation-development potential throughout the programme area; and - construct rural access roads to facilitate marketing of farm inputs and outputs. The target group consists of smallholder farm families, all of whom rely on paddy as their major source of income. Approximately 11 400 families will benefit directly. Within this target group, resource-poor farmers, women and women-headed households are particularly targeted through specific interventions. The programme gives special attention to women, due to their important role in agriculture, and will facilitate their access to services, represent their specific concerns in local institutions and enable them to benefit from programme activities in an equitable manner. Innovative Features: The programme employs a participatory, beneficiary-demand-driven and private-sector approach and, in doing so, will profit from the use of mechanisms piloted in the SDPMA and other IFAD-supported projects. These include: - ensuring that programme activities are PRA-led and beneficiary-owned; - ensuring that qualified and experienced private-sector operators and NGOs help build capacity at the district grass-roots level to implement participatory small-holder irrigation development; - supporting the establishment of village-based savings and credit associations (SACCOs); - training the WUAs to be responsible for water management and scheme operation and maintenance, and raising beneficiary ownership and the sustainability of irrigation schemes; - placing specific emphasis on the participation of women in WUAs and SACCOs; encouraging adequate provision of plots within irrigation schemes for households headed by women; and facilitating specific activities of women by providing shallow wells (for micro-irrigation of vegetables and domestic water supply) and labour-saving/produce-storage equipment; and - ensuring flexibility in programme design so that, during implementation, the programme is able to respond to the emerging strategies of the new policy environment of priv atization and decentralization, as well as to newly developed institutional procedures at the district level. Loan amount: SDR 12.6 million (approximately USD 17.1 million) on highly concessional terms. Total Programme Costs: Estimated at USD 25.3 million, of which USD 3.6 million will be provided by WFP, USD 848 000 by Ireland, USD 3.1 million by the Government and USD 678 000 by the beneficiaries. Cooperating Institution: UNOPS. |
