Agricultural Information
Kapange, Barnabas / 2006

Agriculture remains the largest sector in the Tanzanian economy and how it performs has a significant effect on crop output and correspondingly, on income and poverty levels. The potential of agricultural growth to reduce poverty in rural Tanzania has been debated in the Agricultural Sector Development Strategy, Agriculture Sector Development Programme and now in the upcoming Agricultural Services Support Programme and the District Agricultural Development Plans. All these strategies are supportive of agriculture’s critical role in economic growth and poverty reduction, which nevertheless remains poor. In a bid to reach their clients through better means of communication and dissemination, many Tanzanian agricultural institutions and offices at national and local levels have connected to email facilities and some have access to the whole range of Internet services. Today, the Ministry of Agriculture is working towards connecting Internet facilities in all major institutes, district offices and ward centres and where not feasible, to provide them with easy means of communicating such as mobile and wireless phones. This paper unveils successes and efforts made in bridging the digital divide in terms of access to sources of information. It also looks at failures and lessons learned in the process and addresses not only the country’s poor access to global resources, but also in-country communication—among the regions, districts, wards and even between households. It discusses what has worked and what has not and gives reasons for each case.