More farmers in the ‘central corridor’ (high rural poverty areas in the central part of the country) will continue to benefit from the ‘market systems work for producers’ approach which promises sustainability of growth that adopts to changes in the market plus providing of a large scale outreach, all thanks to the Rural Livelihood development programme (RLDP).

Speaking during the programmes’s partners workshop held in Dodoma last week, the RLDP programme manager, Francis Massawe, said since its inception in 2008, the approach has reached over 100,000 household beneficiaries through work in agricultural and communication projects implemented in three phases.

It is expected that by 2016 more than 500,000 households will be reached.

The meeting was held to share experiences in implementation of the programme, phase 1V milestones and main thrust areas which are geared towards more up scaling and replication of successful interventions as well as orienting partners with the new management structure.

The programme reports to have, at the end of phase III, earlier in March of this year, built partnership with 68 private companies and organizations.

He offered for examples, two Swiss international NGO’s HELVETAS Swiss Intercooperation (HIS) and Swiss Contact (SC), which jointly help to manage RLDP projects.

He gave some statistical evaluation of the kind of partnership aid they were receiving as 646.1m/- in 2008 to 1.8bn/- in 2010.

Farmers and partners benefiting from the programme hailed the Swiss government for their support. They acknowledged the programme has contributed a lot to their lives and increased production even affected product price.  Alisia  Ngalya from Bahi District in Dodoma Region, a benefactor confessed that “…before RLDC  intervention’s we did not have any poultry keeping knowledge but after attending some seminars we are able to improve the practice and increase our income!”  

The rural livelihood development programme (RLDP) is an initiative of the Swiss government supported through the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC)