Speaking at the National Market Development Forum (NMDF) held in Morogoro last week, AGRA senior policy fellow and hub coordinator Godfrey Bwana said they seek to lift millions of Africans out of poverty and hunger by increasing productivity and profitability.

 

The two-day forum was convened by a Dodoma-based Rural Livelihood Development Company (RLDC) in collaboration with the Ministry of Industry and Trade.

 

Apart from Tanzania, similar programmes are being implemented in Mali, Ghana and Mozambique.

 

He said in a statement that the alliance has created five policy nodes that would specifically address seeds, soil health, markets, land and environment.

 

Explaining further, he said, the goal of soil health was to improve soil and crop productivity to contribute to poverty alleviation and food security through the implementation of conducive soil health policies.

 

Bwana said the markets goal is to support development of policies that are responsive, promote competitiveness and sustainable agricultural growth in Tanzania to enable small scale grain producers to increase produce. 

 

On the other hand, the goal for land is to improve farm size and land tenure rights for economic viability of small farms in selected agro-ecological zones.

 

He said the environment node was created to enhance environmental risk management and climate change adaptation by smallholder farmers in Tanzania.

 

Besides, seeds would help to increase agricultural productivity and household income through improved public policies to enhance private sector participation in staple food seed production and marketing, he said.

 

Speaking at the event an official of RLDC Braison Salisali said the idea to establish NMDF was conceived by his organisation in 2009.

 

NMDF is an initiative aimed at providing opportunity to all actors involved in marketing industry to learn from one another and establish means that would facilitate markets, especially of agricultural products.

 

He said the underlining reason is necessitated by the inability by Tanzanian products to compete in domestic and foreign markets.

 

Salisali said the first NMDF was jointly carried out in 2009 by RLDC and Ministry of Industry and Trade in Dodoma. Since then three forums have been held, one in Dodoma and two in Morogoro.

 

He said the forum was created to share experiences and lessons in marketing from different sectors and actors, build and maintain mutual interest on market development through continued dialogue of actors and develop its operational framework.