KM success stories - Tanzania Milk

---

A great story reproduced from the world bank guide to knowledge exchange:

Although Tanzania’s child mortality rate has been falling steadily in recent decades, it remains 77 percent above the world average, at 108 deaths per 1,000 children. In order to address this problem, the Tanzanian government sought to improve nutrition and incomes in rural areas by restructuring its agriculture sector, particularly the struggling dairy industry. 

Tanzania wanted to follow the best model and learn how India carried out its renowned “white revolution,” during which it increased its milk production by a factor of five to become the world’s largest single milk producer. Last year, the World Bank funded a Knowledge Exchange between the two nations, aimed at improving the performance of Tanzania’s dairy sector by promoting favorable policies, incentives and efficient dairy supply chains, as well as improving the operational efficiency of the National Dairy Development Board (NDDB) and the Ministry of Agriculture (MoA). 

The initiative involved a number of Knowledge Exchange Instruments and activities and was highly successful. A working group from Tanzania and India met in a series of videoconferences to plan the exchange, which was anchored by a 10-day expert visit to Tanzania by six officials from the Indian National Development Dairy Board and the Gujarat Federation. Then a small delegation of 14 Tanzanian officials, chosen from the MoA, NDDB, dairy producers, processors, and distributors, visited India on a study tour to see first-hand how India had transformed its dairy industry. The exchange participants held a follow-up videoconference and developed a brochure and videos summarizing the lessons learned.
The outcomes included:

• Enhanced knowledge and skills 

• Improved consensus and teamwork 

• New implementation know-how 

Using their new insights, Tanzanian dairy officials have not only developed policies based on the Indian model, they have also successfully implemented dairy reforms and built consensus among stakeholder groups for a blueprint of further reforms. The NDDB has implemented the rapid results approach learnt from India to scale up the reforms across the country. Even though Tanzania may not see its milk production quintuple in the near future, it has started to make progress in revamping and improving its agriculture sector. Boosting nutrition and incomes in rural areas cannot be far behind.