IITA holds Climate Smart Agriculture awareness session for local-level policymakers

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As part of efforts to ensure sustainability and scalability of efforts to build capacity in Tanzania to respond to the challenges posed by climate change to agriculture, IITA organized a series of awareness creation sessions for councilors and other district-level planners on climate-smart agriculture (CSA) planning and budgeting.

The team from the USAID-funded Building Capacity for Resilient Food Security project specifically met District Council committee members in charge of finance and planning, incorporating representatives from other committees. The sessions were well received by the councilors, who noted the importance of addressing the challenges posed by climate change to agriculture and other economic development activities. The councilors agreed to take the lead to champion CSA in their respective districts and plan and allocate budgets for CSA activities.

The teams visited the following districts:  Ruangwa on 30‒31 March, Kongwa on 12–14 April, and Kilolo on 16 April. The team comprised Catherine Njuguna and Bahati Maregeri from IITA and representatives from the Ministry of Agriculture (MoA) and the President’s Office – Regional Administration and Local Government (PORALG)._

“Today’s session was very important. It has increased our knowledge of CSA, which can help us cope with climate change. If we follow these CSA practices and technologies, we shall not only increase agriculture production and income, and food in our district, but we shall also protect our forests and other natural resources. As a district, our number one source of income is agriculture, so we shall also increase our district revenue,” noted Zuberi White, the chair of the Kongwa District Council.

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