Highlight: More Milk in Tanzania (MoreMilkiT) Project

About the project:
The MoreMilkiT project aims to achieve inclusive growth and reduced poverty and vulnerability among people with dairy- dependent livelihoods in selected rural areas in Tanzania. The project is primarily targeted at pre-commercial marginalized smallholder cattle-keeping men and women who do not currently participate fully in dairy value chains.

Objectives:
This 'four-year project' with research-for-development objectives aims to:

• Develop scalable value chains approaches with improved organization and institutions serving resource-poor male- and female smallholder dairy households;
• Generate and communicate evidence on business and organizational options for increasing participation of resource-poor-male and female-headed households in dairy value chains;
• Inform policy on appropriate role for pro-poor smallholder-based informal sector value chains in dairy sector development.

News: 

Between 1-8 December 2014, ILRI’s staff (in collaboration with Transition International, a Dutch consultancy organization) were in Tanzania to meet partner institutions and individual colleagues in the Maziwa Zaidi dairy value chain project to pilot a gender capacity assessment methodology with seven partners.

The meetings were held with the Tanzania Livestock Research Institute, FAIDA MALI, Local Government Authorities (LGAs) including District Dairy Boards, Sokoine University of Agriculture (SUA), Heifer International, and Tanzania Dairy Board which all work with ILRI to improve milk production and expand markets for smallholder dairy farmers.

The CGIAR Research Program on Livestock and Fish has a gender strategy that aims to “increase gender capacity within CGIAR centers, partner organizations and value chain actors to diagnose and overcome gender based constraints within value chains”. The focus is on improving incomes and employment and on stimulating local level public private partnership models and multi-stakeholder partnership initiatives.