Rice Council of Tanzania

The Tanzanian Rice Partnership (TARIPA) was established in 2011, soon after the launch of SAGCOT as a first step in developing the national rice value chain. Initially TARIPA focused on developing the “Kilombero Rice Cluster” followed by the “Dakawa Cluster” in Mvomero district and the “Mbarali Cluster”. Partner meetings were conducted and TARIPA was presented at the World Economic Forum in Cape Town in May 2011 as the first cluster development under SAGCOT. The main aims of TARIPA were to: develop a partnership framework to respond to rice value chain constraints and opportunities in a coordinated way; build markets and small-scale farmer capacity to produce rice to improve national food security, expand domestic production, improve competitiveness and increase value addition; scale-up core value chain activities to catalyze significant small-scale and large-scale farmer and agribusiness development in the rice sub-sector; support commercial initiatives by building on ongoing plans and activities to scale up production, drive down costs and thereby create a competitive value chain; Attract new partners to the overall rice development plan, the aim being to developing a critical mass of partners within the rice cluster TARIPA started by working with the Tanzania Agriculture Partnership (TAP) and the FAO Southern Highlands’ Food Systems (FAO SHFS) on a study of the rice sub-sector in Kilombero. In August 2011 at a 3-day workshop TARIPA partners discussed value chain constraints in order to lay out a road map for investments needed to develop the cluster. The result was the “Kilombero Rice Commodity Investment Plan”, also called the “Kilombero Rice CIP”. The Kilombero CIP objective was ‘to increase income to the actors in the (rice) value chain so that poverty is reduced’,with five separate Investment Packages: (a) Marketing, (b) Production, (c) Processing, (d) Partnership and (e) Infrastructure and Environment.