Proceedings of the AARC-ECAW Inception Workshop, Landmark Hotel, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, November 3 - 7, 2011

Objectives of the inception workshop for Enhancing Climate Change Adaptation in Agriculture and Water Resources (ECAW) in the Greater Horn of Africa, are aimed at building a common understanding of the project, specifically to understand the background of the project and its purpose and objectives; revise the project log-frame and milestones; prepare the monitoring and evaluation framework; draft a communication strategy; and prepare the framework for the baseline study. The workshop brought together project members from three out of the four partner institutions

ECAWsoft: A web based climate and weather data visualization for big data analysis

In Tanzania, data for climate and weather are normally analyzed by Meteorological Agency and then are published through TV, website and radio. Different stakeholders normally obtain the weather and climate data / information in a generalized way. This calls for a need of a system which allows data to be shared openly to different stakeholders so that they can analyze those data as per their specific needs. Design/methodology/approach: The paper presents the overview of the developed system, ECAWsoft. Also, it gives some few interfaces showing different outputs from the system. Findings: The goal of this paper has been attained by developing a working data visualization tool for climate and weather called ECAWsoft. The system is current operational and is providing open data for different stakeholders

Sorghum yield response to changing climatic conditions in semi-arid central Tanzania: evaluating crop simulation model applicability

Decision Support System for Agrotechnology Transfer (DSSAT) and Agricultural Production Systems SIMulator (APSIM) were calibrated and evaluated to simulate sorghum (Sorghum Bicolor L. Moench) var. Tegemeo under current and future climate in central Tanzania. Simulations for both current and future periods were run assuming present technology, current varieties and current agronomy packages to investigate rain-fed sorghum yield response. Simulations by both crop models using downscaled weather data from eight General Circulation Models (GCMs) under the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project phase 5 (CMIP5) and Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP 4.5) by mid-century show a mixture of increase and decrease in median sorghum yields. Four GCMs project yields to increase by 5% - 23.0% and one GCM show a decrease by 2% - 9%. Model simulations under the remaining three GCMs give contrasting results of increase and decrease. Adjustment of crop duration to mimic the choice of growing local cultivars versus improved cultivars seems a feasible option under future climate scenarios. Our simulation results show that current open-pollinated sorghum cultivars would be resilient to projected changes in climate by 2050s but things seem better with long duration cultivars. We conclude that crop simulation models show their applicability as tools for assessing possible impacts of climate change on sorghum due to agreement in the direction of crop yield predictions in five out of eight selected GCMs under projected climate scenarios. The findings provide useful guidance and motivation to government authorities and development agencies dealing with food security issues to prioritize adaptations policies geared to ensuring increased and sustained sorghum productivityThis article is available at http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/as.2014.510087Regional Universities Forum for Capacity Building in Agriculture (RUFORUM

Analyzing usage of crowdsourcing platform Ushaurikilimo' by pastoral and agro-pastoral communities in Tanzania

Earlier studies report that agricultural extension service for livestock keepers in Tanzania is not effectively offered. ‘Ushaurikilimo’ which is a crowdsourcing platform consisting of a Web and Mobile based agro-advisory system. It is a system which complements the traditional agricultural extension provided to pastoralists and agro-pastoralists. Mobile crowdsourcing for agricultural extension service is an emerging approach to address some of the problems experiencing in traditional agricultural extension service. This study explored the information seeking pattern of livestock keepers who are using ‘Ushaurikilimo’. In total 1739 questions are in ‘Ushaurikilimo’. Out of 1739 questions and answers, the study concentrated on 1312 questions since 427 questions related to forestry. Out of 1312 questions submitted to ‘Ushaurikilimo’ via livestock keepers’ mobile phones, 605 (47%) questions relate to livestock and 53% relate to crops. Most livestock keepers asked questions with keywords related to chicken, pigs and milk from ‘Ushaurikilimo’ knowledge base. Further data mining analysis showed that the following keywords are the most queried information by livestock keepers: poultry management, poultry equipment and accessories, hatching equipment, feed equipment, feed storage, feed manufacturing machinery, product handling/transport equipment, quality testing equipment and energy saving equipment, milk processing, housing and environment, building materials and equipment, feeds and feeding, food preservation, feed additives and dairy products. In this study, the pattern of information seeking behavior of livestock keepers matched the pattern which has been reported earlier by other researchers who explored the information seeking behavior of livestock keepers who are using other sources of information such as newspapers, television, radio, farmers’ friends and extension agents. One peculiar result from this study is that the average response time after the question had been assigned to an expert to answer was 32.49 hours. Thus, the crowdsourcing platform, web and mobile based agro-advisory system proved to be effective compared to conventional agricultural extension methods. This calls for a need to scale up ‘Ushaurikilimo’ to complement the traditional agricultural extension service in Tanzania

Agronomic management strategies for adaptation to the current climate variability : the case of North-Eastern Tanzania

Meeting: Second International Conference on Climate, Sustainability and Development in Semi-Arid Regions (ICID+18, 2010), 16-20 Aug. 2010, Fortaleza, BRResearch was conducted to quantify both the risk and the profitability of agronomic management strategies for maize using long-term climatic data and a crop simulation model. Based on the results of this study, it is recommended that farmers employ innovative agronomic management practices only when the seasonal forecast indicates above normal rainfall. The early availability of seasonal rainfall forecast is thus vital for improved agricultural strategies. Alternatively, farmers are safer if they use conventional approaches, as these have lower associated risks. Increasingly high variability and unreliability of rainfall makes rainfed agriculture in semi-arid areas of sub-Saharan Africa a great challenge

Analyzing usage of crowdsourcing platform Ushaurikilimo' by pastoral and agro-pastoral communities in Tanzania

Earlier studies report that agricultural extension service for livestock keepers in Tanzania is not effectively offered. ‘Ushaurikilimo’ which is a crowdsourcing platform consisting of a Web and Mobile based agro-advisory system. It is a system which complements the traditional agricultural extension provided to pastoralists and agro-pastoralists. Mobile crowdsourcing for agricultural extension service is an emerging approach to address some of the problems experiencing in traditional agricultural extension service. This study explored the information seeking pattern of livestock keepers who are using ‘Ushaurikilimo’. In total 1739 questions are in ‘Ushaurikilimo’. Out of 1739 questions and answers, the study concentrated on 1312 questions since 427 questions related to forestry. Out of 1312 questions submitted to ‘Ushaurikilimo’ via livestock keepers’ mobile phones, 605 (47%) questions relate to livestock and 53% relate to crops. Most livestock keepers asked questions with keywords related to chicken, pigs and milk from ‘Ushaurikilimo’ knowledge base. Further data mining analysis showed that the following keywords are the most queried information by livestock keepers: poultry management, poultry equipment and accessories, hatching equipment, feed equipment, feed storage, feed manufacturing machinery, product handling/transport equipment, quality testing equipment and energy saving equipment, milk processing, housing and environment, building materials and equipment, feeds and feeding, food preservation, feed additives and dairy products. In this study, the pattern of information seeking behavior of livestock keepers matched the pattern which has been reported earlier by other researchers who explored the information seeking behavior of livestock keepers who are using other sources of information such as newspapers, television, radio, farmers’ friends and extension agents. One peculiar result from this study is that the average response time after the question had been assigned to an expert to answer was 32.49 hours. Thus, the crowdsourcing platform, web and mobile based agro-advisory system proved to be effective compared to conventional agricultural extension methods. This calls for a need to scale up ‘Ushaurikilimo’ to complement the traditional agricultural extension service in Tanzania

Experimenting open agricultural extension service in Tanzania: A case of Kilosa Open Data Initiative (KODI)

Journal of Scientific and Engineering Research, 2016, 3(6):116-124This paper presents results from the application of Open Data System to improve coverage of agricultural extension services using web-based and mobile-based farmers‘ advisory information Ushaurikilimo in Kilosa District. The research adopted a participatory action research method to develop the interventions. The findings from this study show that farmers and other actors get timely, relevant and personalized advisory services. The user interface of the Open System hosting Open Data is in Swahili language, a language widely spoken in the study area, which enhanced adoption of the system. The Open System did not require farmers and other actors to pay for the services, which motivated to attract farmers and actors to adopt the system. In order to lower the cost of implementing the project, agricultural extension officers in study villages were used to receive questions from farmers and provided answers, and sent difficulty questions to experts from Sokoine University of Agriculture to answer via their mobile phones