We mostly try and to keep this blog light and (hopefully) interesting. While life in Tanzania, and our work, is almost always interesting, it is often not light. In fact, it is often awfully depressing. And for those of us who were lucky to be brought up in the west, and hence largely insulated from
How do you judge the success of an NGO? Well there are many types of NGOs/development programs and many ways to judge them (something I wrote about here at greater length). But for a livelihood/income enhancing organisation such as ourselves (and many, many others), try this rule of thumb on for size. Would a randomly selected
Only a few days after the visit of the Denmark’s ambassador to our nursery, we received a visit from our Tanzanian Member of Parliament, Zitto Kabwe. Zitto has a long-standing interest in promoting smallholder palm oil development. He was very interested (and impressed!) in the health of the trees and asked a lot of informed
Last Monday we were delighted to be visited by Denmark’s ambassador to Tanzania, Einar Jensen. For the previous two years Seed Change has been supported by DANIDA (the Danish overseas aid agency) and so the Ambassador come by to see the progress. An agronomist by profession, Ambassador Jensen grilled us with questions on yield, water
South Korea South Korea’s recent development has been nothing short of spectacular. In less than half a century, it has gone from being wracked by poverty and dependent on foreign aid, to one of the most advanced countries in the world. In 1960, the average income per person was the equivalent of just $155 a
As part of the ‘Postgrads from the Edge’ series, University of Edinburgh PhD student Tom Cunningham has written a great post on perhaps the university’s best-known African graduate, Julius Nyerere: As President of Tanganyika African National Union (TANU) he led Tanganyika to Independence in 1961 and served as President of the Republic of Tanzania (the
Guest post by Andy Norman. I spent from January to April this year as an intern at Seed Change. During this time, I wrote a blog for a sustainability organisation in the UK about my experience in Kigoma. Here it is! The environmental imperative for sustainability in our world is now clearer than ever.
In March we talked to John Ibrahim about his experience as a Seed Change farmer. Joining our program in November 2014, John completed our eight-month farmer training program and received seedlings from our nursery, which are now a few months shy of three years old. When we last spoke to him he talked about overcoming
Last Monday was International Day for the Eradication of Poverty; a day which can trace its roots to a gathering of more than 100,000 people in Paris on 17th October 1987 to honour the victims of poverty and demand more action worldwide. According to the UN, the day calls for “presenting and promoting… concrete activities
How do you know if your chosen fabulous looking charity is providing good value for your money? Charities frequently report percentages of money spent on “Programs”, “Administration” and “Fundraising” or some similar ensemble. While I understand the motivation for this approach, I think it is the wrong way to go about finding out if your
Last week 421 farmers graduated from our eight month farmer training program. It was a joyous occasion for our hard working farmers. Most have only had the opportunity to complete a few grades at the primary school level. After a very long awaited return to classes and learning, our farmers got to fulfil their desire
One of the big financial innovations in East Africa over the past ten years is mobile money. We’ve briefly mentioned mobile money in previous blog post on banking, which discussed how mobile money is filling the gap left by having the majority of the population not in the formal banking system (and I doubt that
You should know by now that we love a good International Day of Something or Other here at Seed Change Blog HQ. In case you missed it, September 8th was International Literacy Day. Despite steady progress, illiteracy remains endemic around the world. UNESCO estimates that 758 million adults cannot read and write. 122 million of
The internet. The repository of all knowledge. One internet connection and all the information in the world could be yours. The information is available so go and get it; things which were genuinely impossible less than 10 years ago have become very much possible now. Take the 15-year-old kid from Mongolia who got a perfect
Guest post by Andy Norman. This blog was originally posted on andynormdevelopment.wordpress.com A little while ago I wrote a post arguing that recent strong growth here in Tanzania has not been inclusive. Poverty prevails because growth has not benefited the poor as much as it has benefited the rich. Growth has not, lamentably, been inclusive. Inclusiveness is
Who hasn’t heard of an African farmer with a few dozen chickens building her own business or of the rag picker who saves up for two years, buys a cart and doubles productivity. These are the part of the great mass of budding African entrepreneurs. They will be one of the primary drivers of growth
What’s better than one oil palm nursery growing 60,000 high yielding seedlings for the smallholders of Kigoma? How about five oil palm nurseries growing 60,000 high yielding seedlings for the smallholders of Kigoma? Did someone say ten nurseries?! Well, maybe not yet, but we’ve recently made the first few steps in that direction. With the support of our
World Refugee Day was on June 20th 2016. Today is not the 20th of June. Or even June. I had meant to write a blog post on or around World Refugee Day. You know, to harness the global energy and focus the mind of everyday citizens on refugees. But I… forgot/was busy/had other things to do/didn’t fully engage. The Parable of the
For those of us in the West, I think that most people would agree that personal banking is something that we take for granted. No longer do we have to hide our money underneath the mattress (though with negative interest rates in some places this is can be a better option than a bank!). Carrying
Of all the supposed development panaceas touted in the twentieth century, education seemed to many the most likely to succeed. It’s so logical and makes for such a nice argument: invest in education and your country will flourish. This is why the post World War II period saw an unprecedented increase in gross school enrolments
Remember the first time you got your period (or if you are male or never have (to all our young readers out there) – remember the first time you found out what it was all about)?. For some of us who had older sisters or prepared parents or quality sexual education programs in school, it
Presidents. Prime Ministers. Chancellors. Taoisigh. Premiers. The rulers of countries, lords and ladies of the levers of government. Well to a point. Governments, in general, are run through consensus, through compromise, through institutions. As much as we may sometimes dislike them, the rulers of Western democracies, in general, can’t really do such a terrible job.
Last Tuesday we had the pleasure of a rather spiritual visit to the nursery. The leaders of several churches and mosques in Kigoma came to have a look at what we were doing and how their various congregations could get involved. Representatives from the Catholic, Lutheran, and Moravian churches were present, as well has three
We’ve all done it. We’ve all queued up outside a nightclub in the cold for half an hour, only to realise at the front of the queue that we’ve left our ID at home. Okay, perhaps not all of us, but I definitely have. In fact, I probably spent half of my university life trying
When I joined Seed Change for a 3-month internship last January, I had just finished studying for a master’s in Development Economics – a discipline which seeks to solve such problems as how poor countries can become rich and how they can grow both their economies and their citizen’s incomes. Development Economics may sound like
One of Seed Change’s core values is to actively promote female farmers and ensure gender parity in our programs. One might wonder why would we set this policy despite the fact this goes against cultural norms, well read on to find out… Current legislation in Tanzania gives equal rights to men and women across all issues;
Today is World Malaria Day, and as we love a good Day here at Seed Change, we decided to tap out a quick good blog; particularly considering malaria is always topical in here tropical Africa. Causing an estimated 450,000 deaths per year malaria is, and long has been, a huge worldwide health issue for about
These days it seems as if there is an international day for everything. Tuesday 23rd February 2016 was International Dog Biscuit Appreciation day. Wednesday 20th January 2016 was Penguin Awareness Day. Those of you cursing at having missed your chance to be aware of penguins this year, don’t despair, World Penguin Day is coming up
Often on this blog we write about general development issues and how they play out in our local Seed Change context. Not today. It’s straight local context and no wider issues. A Seed Change progress report. An update even. Those of you playing along at home may remember that three months ago we planted 60,000+
Remco got to know Seed Change while working in Kigoma Region on a beekeeping project in 2014. He was so interested in our work that he decided to come back to Kigoma after a break in Belgium, and support Seed Change. Andy joined Seed Change off the back of spending 3 months working with NGOs
Today’s blog post comes from Jackson Ruvamuwabo, our Community Development Manager. Jackson teaches our farmer training classes, conducts one-on-one farmer visits, and builds relations with local village government. Seed Change works with over 400 smallholder palm oil farmers in the Kigoma region; one of them is John Ibrahim from Kizenga village. Before joining Seed Change,
At the end of last year, in a state of giddy, philanthropy-inducing delight after the birth of their first daughter, Mark Zukerberg and Priscilla Chan pledged to give away 99% of their Facebook shares during their lifetime. At the moment, this equates to a whopping $45 billion! To put that in perspective, it’s more than
At Seed Change we do our very best to have a positive and sustainable impact on the lives of those living in Kigoma region. But it is important to know that we are not the only ones with this mission. Last week, two members of the Seed Change team attended a “Forum for Civil Society
Taxi drivers all over the world are renowned for charging extortionate rates to tourists. We’ve all experienced it. We’ve all arrived at an airport and vastly overpaid for a taxi. We’ve all been taken for a ride, figuratively as well as literally. This is probably because we didn’t know how much the going rate was.
Patrick Sirrs, an irrigation professional and Seed Change supporter, has been providing irrigation advice and support to us for over a year – but always from the comfort of his home in Canada. In February he decided to come to out to Kigoma, see what we were doing on the ground, break a bit of
The goal setting department at the United Nations is nothing if not ambitious. Its 8 Millennium Development Goals, running from 2000 until 2015, aimed to tackle such enduringly complex issues as poverty, hunger, inequality, maternal health and low education rates. Although much was achieved in the 15 years, most goals were not fully met. Unperturbed,
1. Solar Power According to a recent World Bank study, Tanzania is very sunny. Why a whole study was needed to decide this, we are not quite sure. Regardless, it appears Tanzania can even compete with the siesta-inducing rays of the sun-drenched, southern European solar powerhouse of Spain. While we shouldn’t expect a sudden influx
Here at Seed Change we are extremely proud of the fact that the trees we provide our farmers with are hugely valuable. As you’ll no doubt remember from our last blog post, hidden inside each $1 Costa Rican seed is a whopping US$720 of value. Multiply this by the thousands of trees we hand out
On Sunday January 10th 60,000 seeds left Costa Rica traveling over 13,000 km via five flights to arrived in the place their parent material comes from – Kigoma. The seeds were pre-germinated in Costa Rica, meaning that when in-transit they were alive and growing, making a long journey through the many airports a high-stakes game.
If you are reading this, you are probably aware that Seed Change works in Tanzania. You may also know that we work in the Kigoma region of Tanzania. But you probably don’t know too much about Kigoma itself. Maybe just something about palm trees growing nicely here. Or if you are chimpanzee fan you may know that
The Tanzanian economy is growing. Fast. Economic growth has been hovering around 7% since the mid 1990s and is expected by those who claim to know these things to continue in this vein for some time. This makes Tanzania one of the fastest growing countries in Sub-Saharan Africa and represents a refreshing change from the
24,000 trees. That’s how many we have in our nursery to give out to farmers. Sounds like a lot. And it is when you have to shovel the 400 tons of soil needed to grow the seeds. But it is not really many trees when you start thinking about which farmers – exactly – they
Seed Change is delighted to announce that we have won a grant from the Australian Government through their Direct Aid Program (DAP) at the Australian High Commission in Kenya! This highly competitive grant is awarded annually for a once-off, small-scale development project that alleviates basic humanitarian hardship and has a direct developmental outcome. And the Australian
Let’s be clear – the damage to rainforests in SE Asia by the expansion of oil palm plantations is deplorable. But let’s be clear about another thing – Tanzania is not SE Asia and not all palm oil is the same. Done right – sustainably, equitably, and judiciously – oil palm could be of significant environmental
On the 27th of July Seed Change was honoured to have the National Uhuru Torch visit our nursery. In Kiswahili ‘Uhuru’ means ‘Freedom’ and the national motto of Tanzania is Uhuru na Umoja – ‘Freedom and Unity’. The Torch race was started by Tanzania’s first President ‘Mwalimu’ Julius Nyerere. It travels around the country visiting each of Tanzania’s
According to this recent article in The Economist, Seed Change’s model of tackling poverty is pretty close to the ideal. The article outlines recent work done by Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo (and several others) of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (who are also authors of the highly readable and informative Poor Economics of a few years
In February 2015 we delivered our first trees to smallholders in Kigoma. A momentous occasion not just for us and the farmers but also the Kigoma region and, yes we’ll say it, Tanzania. This was the first time the highest quality oil palm trees in the world have made it to Kigoma and Tanzania. Jackson,
Exciting news! We’ve been selected to pilot test a smallholder specific approach to High Conversation Value (HCV) area assessment. Conducting an HCV assessment is the major requirement to obtaining recognition as certified sustainable by the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO). Once we have completed the assessment, Seed Change will be well on the way
What do you get if you combine 3.5 hectares of land, 31,000 poly bags, turned inside out and with holes poked into them, 3,400kg of DAP fertilizer, 400 tons of soil – sifted to remove stones, roots, and assorted foreign bodies, 2,951m of PVC pipes, 176 sprinklers, 4 water tanks, 3 water pumps, a whole
We’ve moved our nursery! Seed Change’s nursery is now located on the grounds of the Luiche Secondary School in Kamara Village. We are very lucky to be using this land as the Luiche School is centrally located to our program villages and is only 15 mins from Kigoma town (our previous nursery site was a