1 Strategy for mobilizing funds for agricultural census – Tanzania Experience By Lubili Marco Gambamala National Bureau of Statistics 97.7% of smallholder agric rural households use hand hoe, 2002/03 Agric Sample Census

Contents Background Why conduct Agriculture Surveys and Censuses? Regional Estimates Vs District Estimates Soliciting Funds for Agriculture Surveys and Censuses? –User Producer Dialogues –Dissemination Workshops –Timely Production of Reports and quality statistics –Methodology used to collect the information –Adoption and use of new and modern technologies Conclusion and Recommendations

1.Introduction Most developing countries have recently expressed their commitment to their countries economic reforms. –laying out strategies aiming at reduction of poverty and creation of wealth –Managing their economic reforms in partnership with development agencies, because of lack of resources –In Tanzania, agriculture plays a significant role in employment as well as in wealth creation –Agriculture sector development be given a foremost important priority by developing countries in terms of development, resource allocation, planning and measurement of outcomes. –In Tanzania a vision 2025 Poverty Monitoring Master Plan strategy has been formulated. –planned a series of censuses and surveys to assist in policy formulation, planning and to track changes

4 2. Why conduct Agriculture Surveys and Censuses? Regional Estimates Vs District Estimates In Tanzania and most developing countries a sample survey with regional estimate is cheaper to undertake than a Sample Survey with District estimates, the following reasons justifies why a sample survey with district estimates is desirable than the one with regional estimates. –Local Government Reform Programs, government decentralization Program, the ASDP – Need for timely, reliable and regular Statistics –due to the requirement of district estimates and the need for a wider dataset the cost of these surveys became too much to conduct annually, decided to carry out a comprehensive Agriculture Survey every 5 years instead.

2. Soliciting Funds for Agriculture Surveys and Censuses? It is important to note that surveys and census in particular are resource intensive and most developing countries cannot fund these exercises from their own resources. In Tanzania particularly funding for Agriculture Surveys and Censuses has been through the poverty monitoring master plan, a program which draws funds from development partners and the Government. Below are the strategies used to solicit funds for Agriculture Surveys. User Producer Dialogue In Tanzania these dialogues are normally done during the initial planning stage of Agriculture Surveys/Census to understand the actual requirement of the users of the survey results and during the dissemination process to find out whether the requested demands have been addressed adequately.

Dissemination Workshops In Tanzania Dissemination workshops are done to inform the Government, donor community, development partners and the General Public of the results obtained from Agriculture Surveys and Censuses. This is a feedback mechanism and tries to inform specifically the donors about the results obtained from the exercise. Timely Production of Reports and quality statistics It is very important to timely produce the intended set of reports so that users could utilize the information timely and efficiently. This increases the confidence of the users to the producers and this is likely to attract the willingness of the policy makers (users) to provide funds for Agriculture Surveys and Censuses.

Methodology used to collect the information The methodology used to undertake Agriculture Surveys and Censuses in Tanzania is a subjective method. That is carrying out direct interviews with respondents in order to complete the survey questionnaires. – In early 90’s Tanzania used to carry out Agriculture Surveys and Censuses by using the Objective measurement method. –But later a study which was conducted by experienced Agricultural Statisticians recommended that subjective survey method was cheaper in terms of cost and easy to manage than objective survey method. –Since then Tanzania adopted the subjective method and it has proved to produce reliable, timely and cost effective results than objective measurement.

Adoption and use of new and modern technologies The 2002/03 Tanzania Agriculture Census used OCR Scanning technology for capturing the data from the questionnaires. –The same technology has been used for the 2007/8 Agriculture Sample Census. –This technology is cheaper and has minimum data capture errors compared to manual Data entry. –Use of this technology also helps to reduce the Agriculture Sample Census budget estimates and therefore make the funding exercise affordable to Donors.

Conclusion and Recommendation –The design of a poverty monitoring master plan should set coherent work programme, making sure that costing of the programme is done properly and ensuring sufficient funds for agriculture surveys. –Country level producer user dialogue be encourages as a feedback mechanism to the users and donors –Countries should adopt the use of cost effective data collection and processing methodologies –Data Producers should develop the spirit of timely production of Agriculture Census reports,

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