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There is nothing like experiencing narrow bandwidth first hand to help one appreciate the value of communicating information over a SMS platform! Due to bandwidth restrictions, we have not been able to share as much as quickly as we’d like but here is a sample of the progress we are making during our needs assessment trip to Tanzania.

The first stop on our needs assessment was to the Tanzanian offices of the target="_blank">USAID, where Ben Truscello, Dr. Anthony Knight and I met with Senior Agricultural Economist Dr. David Nyange. David was kind enough to meet with us and discuss the agriculture industry in Tanzania. In these discussions we covered the livestock value chain, movement of livestock within Tanzania and cross-border movements, and the policy and societal implications of the development of Tanzania’s agriculture industry.

Livestock in Tanzania generally move from the Lake Districts in the Northwest (those bordering Lake Victoria) to the Southeast. The progression is from production areas (villages and wards) to small primary markets located within the Districts, of which there are approximately 383, and then on to larger secondary markets, of which there are 12 in Tanzania, and to slaughter. There is some export of meat to the Middle East through the port at Dar es Salaam and also some exchange of live animals across the borders at approximately 11 border markets.

Tanzania has more livestock than any other sub-Saharan African country except Sudan, with an estimated target="_blank">18.5 million head. The challenging and critical task of tracking Tanzanian livestock movement is, among other organizations, a major responsibility of the Tanzanian Ministry of Livestock Development & Fisheries. So, we called an old friend, Dr. Jonas Melewas, now the Deputy Permanent Secretary for the Ministry and a new friend, Mr. Dominic Massawe, the Assistant Director of Livestock Markets to discuss. What we learned from the Ministry, especially regarding the use of technology, was promising.

Currently in Tanzania, there exists a livestock marketing information system that collects animal sale data on a daily basis. The beauty of this system is that it collects point of sale information (count, breed, price in Tsh) via SMS. While it does not collect animal disease data at this time, our discussions with the Tanzanian officials indicate that a SMS-based syndromic surveillance capability (a non-diagnostic means of drawing awareness to the prevalence of diseases in livestock) would have value in promoting the recognition and diagnosis of specific diseases important to the livestock industry and most importantly, the local producers.

From Dar, we are headed west to visit the more rural areas of Morogoro and the Sokoine University of Agriculture . We’ll report back in a few days.