Improving Food Security in Naitolia Village of Northern Tanzania

This project aimed to establish drip vegetable gardens to address the acute problem of food insecurity in Naitolia Village of Monduli District in northern Tanzania. The idea of establishing kitchen gardens in this community arose in the summer of 2019 when the education abroad program sponsored by Michigan State University's (MSU) Tanzania Partnership Program (TPP) collaborated with Naitolians to establish vegetable gardens in a few homesteads. In 2019, the community identified vegetable gardens as one of their priority projects. Therefore, when the 2022-23 NGCE funding opportunity arose at MSU, Dr. Jonathan Choti, MSU faculty leader of the education abroad program known as “Sustainable Community Development in Tanzania”, informed Naitolia leaders and TPP partners in Tanzania of this great opportunity. The members of Naitolia Village were unanimous that the NGCE project should help them to construct vegetable gardens using irrigation water from small dams (hafirs).

Consequently, Dr. Jonathan Choti (MSU/TPP), Mary Malekela (University of Dar es Salaam/TPP Tanzania), and Jonathan Kivuyo (Naitolia Village/TPP Tanzania) worked with the community chairperson to develop the project proposal. The project consisted of three activities, namely:

1. Promoting drought-resistant perennial vegetables.

2. Training community members on the construction of drip gardens.

3. Constructing drip gardens in eleven homesteads.

The community partner, Naitolia Village, is one of two Tanzanian villages in the MSU’s Tanzania Partnership Program. The other TPP members from Tanzania include the University of Dar es Salaam (UDSM) and the Sokoine University of Agriculture (SUA).

Naitolia is also the site for the TPP-sponsored education abroad program. Dr. Jonathan Choti (MSU) and Dr. Vicky Moshi (UDSM) co-led the 2022 TPP joint education abroad program between July 9 and August 20, 2022. The nineteen students from MSU, UDSM, and SUA learned about drip gardens when they worked in Naitolia Village, completing their experiential field projects. Naitolia village lies in an arid region, making it almost impossible to practice farming. The community’s primary source of livelihood is herding, and herders roam long distances with their livestock in search of water and pasture. This community keeps cattle, goats, sheep, and donkeys and raises chickens. They also practice some farming, although drought and wild animal attacks thwart their farming efforts. Therefore, hunger and malnutrition are common issues in Naitolia. Families especially lack vegetables in their diet. The NGCE project helped introduce perennial drought-resistant vegetables to improve food security in this deprived community. The vegetables introduced included Chaya, kisamvu (sweet potato vine), Russian comfrey, and New Zealand spinach. These highly nutritious vegetables can withstand drought conditions, producing greens year-round with minimum water and few pests. Families established these vegetables near kitchens, avoiding being encroached on by livestock and wild animals. The vegetables will enhance home production and combat hunger and malnutrition in this community. The families may sell some of their harvest to buy groceries and other nutritious foods.

The project activities started in early June 2022. The TPP Village-Based Program Officer in Naitolia, Jonathan Kivuyo, led the implementation of the project. He consulted with Mary Malekela, the TPP In-Country Program Officer. Jonathan Choti was the MSU partner. He assisted with acquiring of project funds and supervised the program in July-August 2022 when he was in Naitolia Village leading the education abroad program. Kivuyo collaborated with staff from ECHO, a local NGO in Arusha to acquire sample vegetables and conduct the trainings. The trainers promoted drought-resistance vegetables and disseminated relevant education to villagers at schools, health centers, and farmers’ markets within the community. The project funds supported the promotion and educational activities and the purchase of vegetable seedlings for the drip gardens. The grant also enabled families to pay for the water that they had to obtain from distance dams to put in their hafirs for vegetable irrigation. In addition, the project supported the acquisition of materials needed to build the dams. Kivuyo worked with community leaders to identify families that benefitted from the project. The families had to affirm their commitment by digging the dams themselves, providing the space for the dams and gardens, establishing a fence around the gardens, and maintaining the project upon implementation. Since drip irrigation technology relies on dependable water sources, the households had to commit to building homestead water harvesting technology. The project assisted in the building of 10,000-liter dams in each homestead using dam liner and agricultural cloth to ensure a steady water supply. The project activities, that is, the promotion of drought-resistant vegetables, construction of dams, and establishment of gardens, started in early June 2022 and ended in late mid-August 2022.