Government, MCL and Vodacom launch ‘farm clinic’ to boost farming
Prime Minister Kassim Majaliwa launches the Building a Better Tomorrow initiative at the Farmers Week exhibition in Mbeya yesterday. On Mr Majaliwa’s right is the Speaker of the National Assembly, Dr Tulia Ackson, who is also Mbeya Urban MP. Others are Agriculture deputy minister Anthony Mavunde (left) and Mbeya RC Juma Homera. PHOTO | SAID KHAMIS
What you need to know:
- The programme is aimed at providing youth with employment through agriculture and was launched alongside Farm Clinic, a joint initiative by the government, Mwananchi Communications Limited and Vodacom Tanzania.
Mbeya. The Farm Clinic, a new partnership initiative that brings together the government, Mwananchi Communications Limited (MCL) and Vodacom Tanzania, was officially launched here yesterday.
At the heart of the initiative is the desire to provide relevant content that would show farmers that agriculture was a productive undertaking and that it remains the backbone of Tanzania’s economy.
It is an initiative that will see MCL acting as a content creator while Vodacom Tanzania takes the role of communication platforms that enables agricultural information to reach farmers more quickly.
Speaking during the launch of the initiative, MCL managing director Bakari Machumu said the partnership provided several benefits for Tanzania.
“What we have witnessed today has not just come suddenly. We started with Mwananchi Thought Leadership Forum (MTLF)," he said, noting that after collecting views from various agriculture stakeholders, the company then came up with ‘initiative.
While publishing several informative, well researched and articulate articles on crops that are currently making a change in lives of Tanzanians under the ‘Seeds of Gold’ banner, the company kept receiving more views from stakeholders. The views focused primarily on the need for MCL to come up with solution based reporting for farmers.
“Thus, with the launch of Farm Clinic, we promise to focus on creating content that will bring opportunities to youth so they can join the farming fraternity and thus bring about an agricultural revolution,” he said.
He said being a news content company, MCL was not only about writing and criticizing but also offering practical solutions to complex development challenges facing Tanzania and the region.
“That is why MCL has partnered with the government and Vodacom to launch Farm Clinic,” he said, noting that the move was precisely in line with MCL’s slogan of ‘Empowering the Nation”.
Vodacom Tanzania’s acting managing director Hilda Bujiku said the telecommunication firm values the contribution of technology in developing a nation hence the need for partnerships in realizing the noble goal to accelerate the growth of the agricultural sector.
“Through the launched Farm Clinic, we intend to come up with a platform whereby farmers will be registered so that we can know their total population in the country. This also helps the government to solve and identify various challenges that farmers face,” she said.
Also launched by Prime Minister Kassim majaliwa here yesterday a project dubbed ‘Building a Better Tomorrow, Youth Initiative for Agribusiness (BBT-YIA) which will run from 2022 to 2030.
The BBT-YIA programme has been established to address factors limiting youth engagement in agribusiness.
Some of the factors include limited access to land which makes a majority of youths to continue using family or leased land and therefore enable to make reliable investment. They also face a challenge of limited access to finance as well as to technology and markets.
