Participatory Approach Potentials in Adoption of Agronomic, Land and Water Management Technologies in Semi Arid Areas of Tanzania

Abstract

The study was conducted to asses the potentials of Participatory Approach (PA) in enhancing adoption of improved technologies. Literature consists plenty of general information on Participatory Approach (PA) in Tanzania. However, it has inadequate scholarly information on the contribution of PA in adoption of improved technologies. Specifically, the study determined rates of technologies adoption. A cross sectional research design was adopted for the study. Methodologies used for data collection include Focus Group Discussions (FGD), questionnaires survey, Key Informant Interviews (KII) and participant observation. Questionnaire data were collected from 240 households selected randomly. Data from questionnaires were analysed using Statistical Package for Social Sciences. Content analysis was used to analyse information from FGD, KII, participant observations and document reviews. The results show that PA improved knowledge and skills of beneficiaries as most of respondents from Participatory Irrigation Development Programme (PIDP) schemes (61.3%) adopted improved technologies than respondents in Non-PIDP schemes (25%). The results further revealed that farmers using PA adopted more improved agronomic technologies as 63.7 % of respondents in PIDP adopted improved maize varieties while in non-PIDP were 22.5 %. Further more, 61.2 % of respondents in PIDP schemes planted trees while in Non-PIDP schemes were 24.4%.  It was concluded that PA encourage large proportion of farmers to adopt improved technologies as farmer’s ideas have been incorporated. The study recommends institutionalisation of the PA in tertiary agricultural and forestry institutions curricula and provision of PA training to farmers using PIDP training methods and approaches.

Keywords: participatory-management, technology-adoption, food-security, and PIDP