Rural Tanzania is currently witnessing a multiplicity of interventions aimed at “modernizing” agriculture. SAGCOT has designated a third of country open to investors. Using land for equity and private-partnership arrangements, they are pushing modernization through contract farming.
At the same time the government in cooperation with bilateral, multilateral and NGOs are rapidly formalizing village and individual farmer boundaries. An important aspect of titling is the belief that formalizing customary rights in villages is a key mechanism to protect the land rights of poor farmers, allow them access to credit (which can be used to raise investment and productivity), while attracting investors (which will generate new livelihood opportunities for small scale farmers). Others argue that the focus on formalization misses the main sources of poverty and inequality in rural Tanzania, which include landlessness, the inequity of land distribution and poorly operating markets and other rural institutions. Formalization can institutionalize inequalities in land ownership and even facilitate land grabbing exacerbating rural poverty. Between 2009 and 2016 an interdisciplinary team of researchers undertook more than 2000 household surveys covering 40 villages in eight districts in the regions of Manyara, Mbeya/Songwe, Dodoma and Kigoma along with hundreds of semi-structured interviews with key players (small-scale farmers, pastoralists, hunter-gatherers, large landowners, NGOs, government officials, World Bank officials, bankers and donors). The findings from this project will be used to document and assess the impact of these measures while providing a picture of rural poverty and inequality and the conditions that generate them.