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Our Impact

Policy Outreach and Advisory

The ASPIRES project under this component has been supporting reforms in ten policies of which six have been fully or partially approved, three are at high level dialogue and one is at research level. Even for the completed reforms, further reforms are anticipated as reforms are not static.

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Policy Coordination

ASPIRES played a leading role in establishment of the Policy Analysis Group (PAG) which brings together over 15 organizations working around policy interventions. The purpose of PAG is to coordinate policy activities to ensure there is no duplication of effort and to promote collaboration and synergy. PAG also coordinates policy dialogue with the GoT and other stakeholders to ensure consistency in policy messaging. PAG jointly organizes the Annual Agricultural Policy Conference (AAPC) to bring over 250 stakeholders to share policy research results, identify emerging policy issues for reforms and to prioritize new areas of research. 

Policy Coordination

PAG has advocated reforms in the following areas:

  • Policy predictability and coherence
  • Removal of food trade restrictions
  • Reduction of import duty on farm input and technologies such as irrigation technologies, greenhouse, farm machinery, etc.
  • Reduction of import duty in post-harvest technologies such as grain drying equipment, cold storage, silos and hermetic bags.
  • Raise of import tariff on some food commodities to provide temporary protection to emerging domestic industry
  • Removal of fees and charges of empowerment funds such as credit guarantees
  • Reduction of land rent and statutory charges for land and labor intensive sectors – farming and agro-processing
 

As a result of PAG efforts through ASPIRES leadership, exemptions for VAT have been provided for farm inputs, farm machinery, equipment and various technologies to improve agriculture productivity and reduce post-harvest losses. Import tariffs have been raised on some imported agricultural products such as edible oil, milk, fruit juice, wine, poultry, meat and others.

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Capacity Building

ASPIRES policy activities are implemented in collaboration with six Agricultural Sector Lead Ministries (ASLMs)of the GoT and other policy and research departments. Through collaborative research, ASPIRES has contributed to build capacity of partner institutions to make informed decisions, improved and transparent policy reform process. The beneficiary institutions include:

GoT Ministries: The ASLMs are the Ministry of Agriculture (MoA), Ministry of Livestock and Fisheries (MLF), and the Ministry of Industry and Trade (MIT). Others are Presidents’ Office – Ministry of Regional Administration and Local Government (PO-RALG), Ministry of Health, Community Development, Elderly, Gender, Women (MHCDGW) and Ministry of Finance and Planning (MoFP). The target has been Policy and Planning Departments of ASLMs.

GoT Departments: National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), Tanzania Food and Nutrition Center (TFNC), MIU and PSD.

Sokoine University of Agriculture

Local Government Authorities (186 LGAs)

Parliamentary Committee in Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries

The results of ASPIRES interventions include:

  • Enhanced analytical capacity
  • Increased policy research and analytical skills to support enhanced evidence-based policy making (MIU, PSD, NBS, TFNC)
  • Improved policy administration systems e.g. e-payment for local taxes, provision of laptops and tablets for real time access to data and key information
  • Sponsored 2 New Master’s degree graduates to support agricultural policy

Collaborative Research

Over 20 research activities have been implemented with support from ASPIRES. The collaborative research work has focused on agricultural transformation. Results of the research has been put into use in:

  • Shaping the policy reforms agenda e.g. identification of new research areas on food safety, nutrition double burden
  • Shaping implementation of ASDP-2. For example, SAGCOT has developed SME’s strategy to capture the rising medium sized farms and transforming food systems.
  • Shaping agriculture development programming by Development Partners such as USAID, World Bank, DfID and others. The 2019 Tanzania Economic Update of the World Bank draws heavily from FSP/ASPIRES research work on agriculture transformation.
  • The private sector is responding to research results e.g. banks are developing new financial products to cater for the medium sized enterprises, technology companies e.g. tractor dealership has shown that demand for farm machinery is changing where demand for 45 hp tractor is increasing as opposed to their initial market niche of 100 to 120 hp tractors.

ASPIRES Tanzania

Accelerating Tanzania’s adoption of more effective policies to drive agricultural transformation and sustainable growth​

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