We are working with local institutions to transform Tanzania’s cotton and textiles sector by raising the yields of more than 400,000 smallholders and catalysing downstream industries through a range of activities aimed at the sector’s key constraints.

Cotton in Tanzania is a sector which has huge potential for pro-poor impact.  It impacts large numbers of people, with up to half a million smallholder farmers - concentrated in some of the poorest and least fertile regions of the country - growing the crop.  While it is one of the country’s three most important crops in terms of foreign exchange earnings, the sector has great potential to grow and compete further in the world market: Tanzania’s average cotton yields of 550kg per hectare are barely a quarter of the world average and even smallholders in West Africa achieve yields twice as high.  Furthermore, there is potential to raise the quality of Tanzanian cotton from its current low level which sees it trading at a discount on world markets. 

Crucially, the sector is conducive to change.  The sector’s governing body, the Tanzania Cotton Board (TCB), is a relatively autonomous institution committed to improving the crop’s fortunes, while cotton’s importance to the regions where it is grown helps to ensure a supportive attitude from local authorities.

Therefore, in September 2007 Gatsby launched the Cotton and Textile Development Programme to help the TCB transform the sector by raising smallholder yields and catalysing value-adding downstream industries.  Having undertaken detailed research to identify the sector’s key constraints, the Programme initiated the following interventions:

• Reforming the regulatory structure of the industry
  The current openly competitive structure discourages ginners from providing extension advice and improved inputs to farmers, because when the crop is marketed the ginners who do not invest in this way can afford to undercut any who do.  This lack of investment stunts farmers’ productivity and quality.  As a first step, the Programme piloted alternative “contract farming” arrangements: these have seen yields rise by between 30% in a drought year and 120% in a normal year.
   
• Enabling access to improved inputs
  The Programme is supporting a public-private partnership between local research stations and an international private sector seed company to develop, multiply and distribute improved seed. The research system is also being supported to develop new lines for the future.
   
• Improving farming practice
  The Programme has established demonstration farms piloting conservation or “minimum-tillage” agriculture, which can dramatically increase yields and rebuild nutrient-poor soils.
   
• Developing downstream industry
  The Programme has established training programmes in textile engineering and design, and is employing specialists to work with the Ministry of Industry to encourage increased domestic and foreign investment into the textile industry.

After three years of pilot initiatives, research and coalition-building, the Programme is now at the point of enabling sector transformation.  Long-term engagement with the TCB and Ministry of Agriculture on policy reform has led stakeholders to approve the restructuring of the industry around contract farming.  This will require a huge amount of work to implement over the coming years, including the registration of thousands of farmer business groups.  

Adding to the sense the Programme has reached a tipping point, new seed will be available for the sector from the start of the 2012 growing season, while partnerships have been agreed with ginners, research institutes and local government to disseminate conservation agriculture to farmers widely from 2011 onwards.  Furthermore, co-funding has been secured from the UK’s Department for International Development, and the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation.

Gatsby’s ambition is for the Programme to not just have short-term impact, but to ensure long-term, sustainable change.  Therefore a high priority alongside each intervention is to build the TCB’s capacity to monitor and manage the sector, increasing the sector’s resilience to economic, climatic and even political change, and ensuring its progress is sustained after Gatsby’s involvement ends.

Video - The Benefits of Contract Farming

This video was broadcast on a variety of channels across Tanzania in both English and Swahili to inform farmers of the benefits of the contract farming model and encourage their participation:

Video - Boosting Yields Through Conservation Agriculture

This video explains the benefits of conservation agriculture farming practices for cotton production in Tanzania. It also outlines how the Programme is disseminating conservation agriculture to farmers across the country: