Impact story

From being a job seeker to having a successful agricultural business

Finding a proper job or a stable source of income has always been a significant challenge in the country. Meet Aisha Luka, who, despite knowing agriculture and entrepreneurship, she was still unable to have a secure source of income. Agriculture, on the other hand, is the backbone of the Tanzanian economy. According to World Bank (2016), agriculture provides a living for 66% of Tanzania’s population. However, there is no better way to accomplish it than to do it responsibly by adhering to agroecological principles of farming that protect the environment while also increasing productivity. As a result, in 2019, Aisha Luka decided to join the Mapambano group, which is one of the farmer’s groups under the Austrian Development Agency, and the ICEP funded Dodoma Women in Agriculture and Business Initiatives (DWABI). Prior to adopting agroecological methods, Aisha would only collect up to 3 sacks of maize, sunflower, and groundnuts on 3 – acres of land, which resulted in a lower income of up to 500,000TZS per year but this will all change once she starts implementing these methods.

Who is Aisha?

Aisha Luka, a 42-year-old woman, mother of two, is married and living in Nzali village in Chilonwa ward in the Chawmino district, Dodoma. Dodoma is a semi-arid region with distinct dry and wet seasons of low rainfall below potential evapotranspiration, but it is not a desert, so farmers can boost productivity and improve soil fertility through agroecological approaches.Aisha had extensive training on proper farming methods like proper spacing, improvement of soil fertility using animal manure, intercropping, and application of mulch after joining the group. This shifted her entire agricultural perspective to a more sustainable one. She also uses quality local seeds in her process. Another thing she managed to do was increase the amount of land she was growing by 133% from 3 acres to 7 acres. She currently harvests 15 bags of maize, 6 bags of Sorghum, and 15 bags of sunflowers which have doubled her income by 200% from 500,000TZS to 1,500,000TZS per year. This was a great success for Aisha as she confessed that she has never harvested such a quantity of products prior to joining the Mapambano group. This increased her household income and ensured food security for her family and community.Aisha’s success in Agriculture and the entrepreneurship training she got from SAT has favored her in that she sees and utilizes any kind of entrepreneurship opportunities that crosses her way. Following few months after her training, Aisha saw an opportunity in her neighborhood and decided to utilize the opportunity to start up a small business making liquid soap and selling baobab fruits to earn some money. She also cultivates and sells tree seedlings to her neighbors as she is interested in afforestation because she knows that this is an important factor when it comes to improving soil fertility and increasing productivity in these dry areas.

Success in business

Her success has emerged fully that she was able to buy a piece of land of 0.15 acres for building a modern house for her family. She also keeps 15 cows for dairy, and has bought a motorcycle that generates 10,000TZS per day!Aisha is a motivation to her fellow women in Chamwino; she has trained 6 groups of 182 farmers in Aisha is motivation to her fellow women in Chamwino; she has trained 6 groups of 182 farmers in Nzali and Mahama villages; moreover, she has facilitated the establishment of 6 demo plots and training on entrepreneurship, saving, and lending model. Currently, Aisha is making plans to start poultry farming.

DWABI Project is proudly supported by the Austrian Development Agency (ADA) and ICEP

Adult learning among pastoralist communities

It’s trend and success so far since the implementation of the program.The basic rationale of adult learning is a keystone for the Farmers and Pastoralist collaboration (FPC) project which created a program that enabled several pastoralist groups based in the villages they live to have access to adult education literacy. With the determination of the participants and the motivation of the tutors, despite the challenges encountered in the process, significant progress and transformation have been made.Based on the new plans and strategies, progression has been observed and implemented by FPC together with the pastoralist groups. In such circumstances the continuation of the problem facing these pastoralist groups is ongoing, and there is still an issue of illiteracy among the adults who are members of this group. At first, it was forbidden for women in particular to have formal education, then circumstances later on changed and the women desired to go to school. But recently we deal with the internal challenges facing the adults who are already engaged in the learning activity and not leaving behind the enrolment of new students who have the desire to learn.

Ten groups from different villages

Earlier when the program started, 8 pastoralist groups were introduced to the project, the response of these groups was not quite good because there were huge issues based on the challenges facing these groups. some of the primary groups faced defects that were from the roots of ideology, culture, and environment. Tracing some shortcomings faced by these groups is like; some groups were to be eliminated due to the environmental factors they faced. Taking a good example from the Naedoloki group, it was forced to be eliminated because of the elephant invasion that happens to be a threat to their village. The pastoralist society is so devoted to the obedience of their culture, in society women are portrayed as a weak element in society, so they are not allowed to do what the men do, and they are also denied access to quality education.  Nevertheless, these societies earlier had conflict issues with the farmers, and this was so outrageous that led to death among them and misunderstanding between these two-party groups. But FPC managed to outreach all their problems and tried to reduce the disparity between the problems faced by the pastoralists and the goals to be achieved in the project.Currently, they are 10 new pastoralist groups from different villages. The groups are Nadupo , Mkombozi , Namayana ,Mafanikio ,Esupati , Nakoryduyook , Napyook , Ilaramataki, and Naselini. Among these, there are two new groups which are Nakorydyuook and Namayani. the total success of the groups is approximated up to 34% generally and there is an improvement of 24% from each group. All these groups are undergoing adult learning to master how to read and write. The best part of the achievement is that we managed to enroll a quite good number of adults who wish to have an access to education, and a big percentage of this group were women. To the great extent, these groups are on track to achieve their goals.