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Overview

To date, IDRC has supported 135 projects in Tanzania, some of which were regional. These represent an allocation of more than $40.7 million.

IDRC approved 11 projects in Tanzania during the 1970s, beginning in 1973. The Centre’s first decade of research focused on improving agriculture yields, for example by evaluating different varieties of cassava, and growing techniques for sorghum, legumes, and millet. It also advanced low-cost sanitation, in a two-phase project that adapted compost toilet systems to tropical temperatures and the Tanzanian context.

In the 1980s, agriculture remained a key research area. A third of IDRC’s 61 projects addressed some aspect of crop improvement, technology transfer, storage, or farming systems. Other research issues included groundwater pollution and information and communication technologies (ICTs), with a prototype computer database that aided Tanzania’s growing agricultural cooperative movement in keeping track of information related to crop procurement and input distribution.

Health research began to figure in 53 projects the 1990s, with work on Vitamin A, HIV/AIDS, and epilepsy. IDRC-supported researchers also continued to improve sorghum, millet, and maize yields, and began to explore such issues as greenhouse gas emissions and pollution.

Currently, IDRC funds nine Tanzanian projects worth $23.3 million. Advancing the trend begun last decade, the current research centrepiece is health-related. The well-known, multi-faceted Tanzania Essential Health Interventions Project’s (TEHIP’s) broad goal is to equip district health care workers to identify priorities more effectively and make the best use of their limited resources. The investment has already netted returns — one project phase has reduced child mortality rates in two districts by more than 40 per cent. IDRC’s portion of TEHIP is projected to be $6.3 million, with the rest co-funded by the World Bank, the World Health Organization (WTO), Tanzania’s Ikefara Health Research and Development Centre, the Parliament of Canada, the University of Newcastle in the UK, and Ghana’s INDEPTH Network.

Recent Project Highlights

Strengthening Health Care in Rural Districts

For every 1,000 children born in rural Morogoro, 245 will die before reaching the age of five. This devastating child mortality rate is one reason why the Tanzanian government in 1994 launched sweeping health care system reforms. The state took on the role of facilitator and policymaker and handed authority over health care to local districts. To support this process, IDRC and other donors started the comprehensive Tanzania Essential Health Interventions Project (TEHIP), to help the coastal districts of Morogoro and Rufiji find the best ways to work and to manage their resources. Broadly, TEHIP research quickly equips local health care officials to identify and plan priorities, then to shift resources to spend their money more efficiently. A modest $1 per capita, per-year investment reduced child mortality rates in the two districts by more than 40 per cent. TEHIP was inspired by the World Bank’s 1993 World Development Report, which suggested that giving 80 percent of the population access to basic health, in low-income countries, could decrease premature deaths by a third. In this second collaboration between IDRC and the United Nations Foundation, researchers are helping to evaluate essential health interventions, particularly those related to integrated management of childhood illness in rural districts. With data collection, analysis, tools development, and capacity building activities, this phase, importantly, also creates a platform to “roll out” tools and strategies developed by TEHIP. (Project # 101346; Duration: 2002–2005; IDRC allocation: $398,851; IDRC contact: Christina Zarowsky, email: czarowsky@idrc.ca; Research partner: May Yacoob, United Nations Foundation.)

Putting Gender on the Table

In developing countries, globalization affects men and women differently. For example, for many African women, globalization has reduced access to land, debased wages, and increased inequality. Because the private sector drives the negotiating agenda for African countries at the World Trade Organization (WTO), broader social issues are generally not taken into account. To address this imbalance, researchers analyzed the social and economic impact of new trade regimes on women and men in Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda. The process has expanded the range of concerns that African policymakers bring to the WTO table. (Project # 100604; Duration: 2000–2002; IDRC allocation: $498,800; IDRC contact: Susan Joekes, email: sjoekes@idrc.ca; Research partner: Flora Mndeme Musonda, Economic and Social Research Foundation.)

Pilot Telecentre Switches on Information Age

In sub-Saharan Africa, fewer than five telephones serve every 1,000 people and a computer may cost three times an average professional's monthly salary. To determine the impact of information and communication technologies (ICTs) on disadvantaged areas, IDRC supported two pilot telecentres in Mozambique that provided access to email, Internet, and office equipment. For poor, isolated communities these opened doors to previously unavailable information enabling people to exchange ideas with close neighbours and potential partners worldwide. Drawing on this experience, researchers then set up a telecentre in Sengerema, Tanzania, to assess social, economic, and cultural impacts of the information revolution in rural Tanzania. (Project # 100480; Duration: 2000–2003; IDRC allocation: $105,000; IDRC contact: Edith Ofwona Adera, email: eadera@idrc.or.ke; Research partner: Dr Yadon Mtarima Kohi, Tanzania Commission for Science and Technology.)

Making the Links Between AIDS, and Food and Nutrition Security

The HIV/AIDS pandemic in eastern and southern Africa is having a major impact on agriculture, the main source of livelihood for the region’s population. Farmers living with HIV are often too sick to work their land, while healthy farmers must take time off from the fields to tend the sick and attend funerals. Rural poverty, linked in part to agricultural development, feeds further spread of the infection. Despite these facts, many agricultural research and development institutions in the region haven't yet tried to understand how to prevent or mitigate the consequences of HIV/AIDS. Simpler labour-saving tools, for example, could help preserve the energy of a farmer living with HIV. This project is helping to address this knowledge gap, first in Malawi and Uganda, then in Tanzania. Specifically, country teams are researching vulnerabilities of agricultural systems to AIDS in Uganda; and supporting country teams in Malawi and Uganda are assessing policies and programs. The project is one component of a system-wide initiative on HIV/AIDS and agriculture developed by the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR). (Project # 100776; Duration: 2001–2005; IDRC allocation: $349,000; IDRC contact: Christina Zarowsky, email: czarowsky@idrc.ca; Research partner: Michael Loevinsohn, International Service for National Agricultural Research.)

Finding Plague's Place in the Ecosystem

In 1996, there were 6,600 suspected cases of plague in Tanzania's Lushoto District, one of few places in the world where plague remains a major health problem. Some 580, or nearly nine per cent of the total, died. Studies had shown the disease's biological factors to be comparable to other places in Tanzania where plague has been eliminated. However, a 1992 IDRC project had discovered three main environmental, social, and cultural similarities among Lushoto's plague cases: local people did not see the disease as treatable; existing social, gender, and household roles led to more women and children catching plague; and a number of uncoordinated organizations in different sectors sent conflicting messages as they tried to deal with the problem. This second-phase project used participatory qualitative and quantitative techniques to develop, run, and evaluate a multi-sectoral plague control program designed to be more socially and culturally acceptable, and more gender-sensitive. (Project # 003189; Duration: 1997–2004; IDRC allocation: $247,680; IDRC contact: Jean-Michel Labatut, email: jmlabatut@idrc.ca; Research partners: B.S. Kilonzo and G.K. Lwihula, Sokoine University of Agriculture.)

Addresses

1. Promoting Essential Health Interventions in Tanzania [Project # 101346]

May Yacoob, United Nations Foundation, Suite 700, 1301 Connecticut Avenue, Washington, DC, United States 20036
Email: myacoob@unfoundation.org

2. International Trade and Gender in East Africa [Project # 100604]

Flora Mndeme Musonda, Economic and Social Research Foundation, PO Box 31226, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania
Email: esrfc@twiga.com

3. Multi-Purpose Community Telecentre Pilot Project-Sengerema Tanzania [Project # 100480]

Yadon Mtarima Kohi, Tanzania Commission for Science and Technology, PO Box 4302, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania
Email: ykohi@costech.or.tz

4. AIDS, Food and Nutrition Security: Supporting Innovation [Project # 100776]

Michael Loevinsohn, International Service for National Agricultural Research c/o International Livestock Research Institute, PO Box 5689, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
Email: m.loevinsohn@cgiar.org

5. Ecosystem Health (Tanzania) [Project # 003189]

B.S. Kilonzo, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Sokoine University of Agriculture, PO Box 3110, Morogoro, Tanzania
Email: kilonzo@suanet.ac.tz

G.K. Lwihula, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Sokoine University of Agriculture, PO Box 3110, Morogoro, Tanzania
Email: lwihula@suanet.ac.tz

Document(s) 3 of 19