Participatory Agricultural Development and Empowerment Project

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The Participatory Agricultural Development and Empowerment Project for Tanzania seeks to raise the production of food, incomes, and assets of participating households and groups in about 840 villages in a sustainable manner through the implementation of small agricultural development subprojects planned and managed by community members and farmers' groups. This objective will be achieved by: (i) empowering self-selected rural communities and farmers' groups to make decisions regarding choice of sustainable and remunerative productive technology; (ii) sharing of costs by the public sector and participants, and hence sharing the risk of adoption of improved technologies, again for self-selected participants; (iii) enhancing demand for products and services provided by the private sector in rural areas by increasing the purchasing power of participating groups and encouraging the growth of savings; (iv) promoting improved land and crop husbandry practices by participants; (v) supporting the ongoing decentralization process at the district level; and (vi) partially financing maintenance and/or construction of roads, bridges, and other small subprojects to improve access to markets. The project has two components: (i) Community Agricultural Development Subprojects; and (ii) Capacity Building and Institutional Strengthening. The first component will assist the government to provide matching grants to communities and farmers' groups to finance agricultural development subprojects selected through PRA and approved by the Village Councils. Under this component, the project will support both Community Investment Subprojects (CIS) and Farmer Groups Investment Subprojects (FGIS). Under this component, the Project Coordination Units for Tanzania mainland and Zanzibar, together with the Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security And the Ministry of Agriculture and Natural Resources, and Cooperatives at the national level, and the District Councils at the local level, will be strengthened to enable them provide adequate support to implementing agencies in matters related to policy, institutional and regulatory functions.