The Double One Project: The Tanzania-China Joint Programme for Scaling-up the Maize Labour Intensification System in Morogoro Region

Using Chinese experience to address low production, productivity and value addition

Overall, results demonstrate that the Morogoro Project Management team, the seven participating District Councils, and the target beneficiaries efficiently utilized project funds from the China Agricultural University (CAU)/China Institute for South-South Cooperation in Agriculture (CISSCA), with almost a 100 percent achievement, leading to the full realization of project objectives. 

The project is effectively operational in all ten planned villages, with a coverage of 1,432 target farmers (around 72 percent achievement out of the planned 2,000 farmers) cultivating 1,432 acres (580 ha) (equivalent to 80 percent achievement against the overall target of 1,800 acres [729 ha], or 10,000 mu).The project that made use of the innovative MPMS and called for the strengthening of partnership among various key stakeholders, namely: universities, governments (central and local), research institutes and farmers and local communities. It emerged that the project contributed directly toward the realization of Tanzania’s Agriculture Sector Development Programme II (ASDP II) objective to improve productivity of priority commodity value chains, and in particular the maize crop. Additionally, implementation of the project was embedded in the local circumstances and socio-economic context, while emphasizing the use of locally available resources or inputs. 

Sustainability of project’s interventions has been ensured by making effective use of existing central and local government structures, systems and procedures, as well as ensuring that all the four levels of government discharge their duties diligently, underpinned by effective utilization of the MPMS. Additionally, sustainability of the project interventions was enhanced through the emphasis on using locally available resources and focusing on beneficiaries’ priority needs, constraints, opportunities and threats inherent in their socio-cultural, political and economic environment. The compatibility of project’s interventions with beneficiaries socio-cultural and economical systems has increased beneficiaries’ enthusiasm and enhanced ownership, and hence sustainability of interventions. 

Since the project has been effectively operational in all ten planned villages with a coverage of 1,432 target farmers, good practices can be extended more widely within Tanzania, in which there is an efficient management team with academic expertise consisting in stakeholders within the local government leadership. The key lessons learned can be summarized as follows for further possible replicability: