Foreword
Welcome to this update version of our Kagera Community Development Programme
(KCDP) web site. The site aims to introduce KCDP, to explain its work and to provide
access to some of its findings. There is a page on Kagera,
which provides background information about the region and several pages on our
main project, the banana project. Results
of our recently introduced new banana varieties
are available. You can also see one page on the water
supply project.
Tanzania
is one of the poorest countries in the world with 37 EURO per capita and Kagera
region is the poorest in Tanzania and ranks last among the 20 regions of the country.
During the last few years, the poverty in Kagera has been deepening because of
low world coffee price, the most important cash crop of this region until recently.
Also, structural problems of coffee marketing inherent to the Republic of Tanzania
and the remoteness of the region continuously impoverish the population. Farmers
are then forced to sell their banana, the most important staple food, on local
and external market for generating incomes, to pay for school fees, hospital and
to buy less expensive and less nutritive staple food such as cassava.
This is
one more reason to KCDP for putting a tremendous effort on banana rehabilitation,
improving food security and counterbalancing the losses due to declining incomes
from coffee. In this respect, KCDP and the Belgian Technical Cooperation (BTC)
are also assisting an association through a Micro-Intervention Project (MIP) for
marketing banana wine. Other initiatives are taken for processing banana
cakes and more generally for adding value to this particular agricultural
product.
Dr.Ir. Alain Gallez & M.Phil. Gerald T. Runyoro
Belgian & Tanzanian KCDP Program Officers
Introducing
KCDP
Kagera
Community Development Programme is a rural development programme implemented within
the framework of an agreement between Belgium and Tanzania. KCDP aims to improve
the living standards of rural communities, to fight malnutrition, and to assist
in the development of rural resources and incomes.
KCDP
operates under the Tanzanian Prime Ministers' Office (PMO) and the Belgian Technical
Co-operation (BTC). The Belgian contribution to policy making and strategic planning
comes from the Directorate-General for International Co-operation (DGIC). The
total contribution of the DGIC to the programme is at present 5,45 Million EURO,
excluding expatriate expertise.
KCDP's
first project,, implemented in 1995, was drilling bore-holes
in Karagwe district, in areas that were hosting refugees from Rwanda.
In
1996, with the assistance of a scientific advisor (Prof. R. Swennen, KULeuven,
Belgium), KCDP investigated the reasons for declining banana production in the
area and found the main problems to be pests, diseases and poor soil fertility.
This led to a project for "Propagation and
Diffusion of Superior Banana Plants" which, to the present, remains KCDP's
most important activity.
To contact us.
By email, click here to mail us at:
kcdp@africaonline.co.tz
By post: KCDP, P.O. Box 1745, Bukoba, Tanzania
By phone: (+255) 028 2221537 or 028 222 1538
By fax: (+255) 028 2221538
This site was
last updated on May 2002