Tuesday, January 2, 2018

Impressive headway notched as Kili plants 24 m trees after 2016

DAILY NEWS Reporter in Moshi
A TOTAL of 24,221,496 trees were planted in Kilimanjaro Region between 2013 and 2016, under a tree planting campaign focused on enhancing its environmental status.

This was revealed here recently by Mr Simon Msoka, an official of the Kilimanjaro Regional Secretariat, during a land use and climate smart agriculture workshop. The workshop was organised by Hanns R. Neumann stiftung (HRNS) in collaboration with the Uganda-based International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA).
“The campaign’s goal was to plant a total 31,555,053 trees during the period but only 24,221,496, were planted, of which 19,548,271 have survived so far,” he said. He explained that the trees were planted in all the six districts within the region and two forests farms – in West Kilimanjaro and in Rongai.
Mr Msoka further explained that on the broader front, the campaign rhymed with initiatives to grapple with global climate change challenges. He said the workshop was critical for Kilimanjaro Region which had a total of 643,300 hectares of land suitable for agriculture.
Speaking during the workshop, a IITA research associate, Ms Diana Kirungi, said its target, among others, was to map major agro-ecological land use zones in Kilimanjaro Region, to identify major constraints, solutions and opportunities for Climate Smart Agriculture (CSA) adaption.
The Northern Zone HRNS Coordinator, Mr Thadeus Moshiro, said the workshop would help to identify and map the main actors in climate smart agriculture and their roles in Kilimanjaro Region. “This would help among other things, to develop a climate-smart investment pathway for coffee cultivation and also to guide coffee farmers in Kilimanjaro Region towards improved productivity and income generation,” he said.
A facilitator from HRNS, Blaga Zlateva, said the HRNS Project was currently working with more than 25,000 coffee growers in Tanzania, enabling the growers to come to terms with global climate change.
“We support coffee growers to effectively respond to changing climatic conditions, something that would help them increase coffee output and therefore increase their income, and, broadly, contribute to national economic development,” she said.

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