About ASDP

Tanzania is among the developing nations targeting to become middle income country by 2025 as provided in the Tanzania Development Vision 2025. The Agricultural Sector contributes significantly to the socio-economic growth of Tanzania. The smallholder farmers (including livestock and fishery) dominate production, with more than 90% of cultivated land. The sector provides about 65.5% of employment; provides livelihood to more than 70% of population, 29% of GDP; 30% of exports and 65% of inputs to the industrial sector (URT 2014).

The government through Agriculture Sector Lead Ministries (ASLMs) in collaboration with other stakeholders has formulated the Agricultural Sector Development Programme phase two (ASDP II). This is a ten-years programme (2017/2018–2027/2028) that will be implemented in two (2) phases each divided into five-year implementation period. The First Phase will start in 2017/2018 – 2022/2023. The program is a follow up to the ASDP I implemented from 2006/2007 to 2013/2014.

The aim of ASDP II is to address critical constraints and challenges to sector performance and to speed up agriculture GDP, improve growth of smallholder incomes and ensure food security and nutrition by 2025. The programme builds on and strengthens successful investments under ASDP-1, consistent with the long-term and medium-term policy frameworks, the sector development strategy developed in Agricultural Sector Development Strategy (ASDS,2001), the signed sector investment plan (Tanzania Agriculture and Food Security Investment Plan - TAFSIP, 2011), the revised ASDS-II (2015) and key lessons learned from ASDP-1 implementation.

ASDP I Key Achievements

ASDP was launched in 2006 to provide a sector-wide investment vehicle to deliver the Programme and to contribute to the targets of reducing rural poverty from 27% to 14% by 2010, and raising agricultural growth to 10% per year by 2010.

1. Among ASDP I key achievements was realizing bottom up-planning approach which ensured participatory planning through District Agricultural Development Plans (DADP) and 75% of budget was spent at the LGAs, 20% at national and 5% at regional level.
2. Improvement of human and physical capacity at District, Region and Nation levels, a capacity which can now support ASDP II activities and provide an environment for new initiatives to use and contribute to the higher level sector goals.
3. Improved Agriculture Research Services including increased number of research conducted for crops, livestock for improved varieties etc.
4. Improved support to agricultural inputs use: some improved seeds were produced and used; there was increased agricultural fertilizer, farmer access and use of agricultural mechanization such as tractors, power tillers, oxen-plough, all of which resulted in increased area under cultivation by 148%.
5. The rehabilitation, improvement and construction of a number of irrigation schemes- resulted in increased irrigated area from 264,338 hectares in year 2005/06 to 461,326 hectares in year 2014.
6. Marketing infrastructure and marketing systems for commodity value addition were developed. They include rehabilitation of warehouses; developing crop and livestock markets and developing marketing systems for cash products- receipt systems.
7. Food Self Sufficiency Ratio was improved from 103% in 2009/10 to 123% in 2015/16.
8. Food versus inflation: The food prices remained stable leading to declining inflation rate, 7.01% in year 2006 to 5.56% in year 2010, and 5.6% in 2015; by October 2016 inflation was 4.5%. The export volume and value also increased for cash crops (coffee, cotton, sisal, tea, tobacco and cashew nuts).

ASDP I - Key Challenges

Some of the challenges identified during the implementation of ASDP I:

1. Inadequate governance, management and coordination (horizontal and vertical coordination). This resulted to unclear roles and responsibilities; inadequate accountability systems and failure to coordinate sector players/stakeholders. Consequently, there were fragmentation, thinly spread of resources; and overcrowding in cases which led to low results/impact, generally difficult to measure programme attribution.
2. Lack of sector enablers. The programme was implemented in a constrained enabling environment with inconsistent policies and regulations.
3. The inadequate data and data systems also hindered the sector and program monitoring and evaluation.
4. Inadequate technical and financial capacity (particularly in irrigation schemes
5. Inadequate capacity to plan, manage and deliver investments. This led to delayed disbursement and caused carry over of funds from year to year.

Lessons Learnt from ASDP I

Several lessons and experiences were drawn from the implementation of ASDP I which guided the design of ASDP II.

1. The Sector Wide Approach (SWAp) in agriculture is possible when there is sufficient leadership, commitment and well-resourced decentralization of agricultural development planning and implementation.
2. ii. Need for improved farmer empowerment and organization.
3. Need for program focus and prioritization on high impact areas, which beyond productivity also strengthen upstream levels of targeted value chains.
4. Need for good governance, management, coordination, and harmonized monitoring and evaluation (M&E) of the program;
5. Need for improved sector enablers.
6. Need more investments in agricultural sector (the government, private sector and development partners). There is therefore a need for harmonization and coordination on how the public sector should facilitate and enhance private sector participation; Development Partners and other stakeholders’ involvement in the agricultural sector.

ASDP II Transformation Agenda/focus

5.1 Prioritized Value Chains and Agricultural Ecological Zones (AEZ). The scope and focus of the programme under ASDP-1 was national and interventions were in almost all agricultural sub-sectors and scales, depending on LGA prioritization and investment decisions. Under ASDP II the intervention will cover all districts in terms of public service delivery (basic support for capacity building, demand-driven advisory services, etc.); however, investment coverage will focus on prioritized high potential commodities along the Value Chain (VC) and Agricultural Ecological Zones (AEZ) considering selected priority crop, livestock and fish commodities.

5.2 The implementation approach will be a “one- priority crop/product per AEZ”. Regions will be “clustered” so that service provision and technological recommendations can be channelled to similar production systems and rural household types. Public service delivery interventions will cover all districts and will be supported by other programmes and projects that are funded by various multilateral agencies, bilateral donors and NGOs. District coordination mechanisms established by ASDP II using DADP will improve local coordination among all sector interventions, including private sector.

5.3 The selection of the AEZ/ clusters considered five criteria starting with the zone’s production level and importance. Others are high production of prioritized value chains, as a percent of national production, the potential market demand for raw and processed products within the region and zone the processing level/existing processing capacity within the zone, sustainable systems or contribution to sustainable local production systems, to household food security and income generation and potential growth - for productivity and value addition improvements, including local agribusiness development and increased agricultural exports.

5.4 Regarding institutional capacity strengthening, the programme will focus on: (a) empowering and strengthening small-scale farmer organizations, towards enabling farming as a business; (b) supporting agribusinesses linked and integrated with farmer production systems for markets and value chain development; (c) strengthened public and private support services for enhanced use of improved technologies and agribusiness; (d) development of markets (policies and infrastructure) and productive infrastructure; and (e) institutional capacity building at various levels, for state and non-state actors.