TANZANIA joins the world to celebrate the International Women’s Day (IWD) today, with a national event expected to be held in Arusha Region, attended by President Samia Suluhu Hassan.

The IWD is celebrated as a way of honoring women success worldwide and promote their rights. This year’ celebration is taking place at a time when most women around the world are faced with food uncertainty resulting from climate change impact.  

In Chemba and Kondoa districts in Dodoma regions, women have little to celebrate as their villages have been badly hit by draught. Key crops such as maize, sunflower, groundnuts and finger millet have dried out in the fields. 

Leilah Mbilingi, a resident of Salare village in Kondoa District is worried about the status of her more than one acre maize field resulting from dry spell. 

Her village, just like the neighbouring Keikei, Potea, Mauno and Sambwa, lies in the semi-arid regions, meaning they experience relatively low rains as compared to other regions outside the semi-arid zone of Tanzania. 

The low rains often leave farmers with very little harvest each year. This 2025 climatic condition, the farmers say, is a replica of the 2015-2016 farming season, a period when they experienced no harvest. 

“We will not harvest any maize this year. We are expecting the rain in March and if it fails to rain, then it is likely that we will have very tough months ahead,” she says. 

Leilah who has been imparted with best agronomic practices from agriculture experts, is also growing millet and sorghum where she expects to have at least little harvests. 

Agriculture experts from several organisations and government institutions have visited the villages in the two districts to impart them with the knowledge on farming techniques like intercropping, integrated farming, rainwater harvesting, nine seeded holes technique of planting and many other technological practices. 

However, without the rain, all these techniques become of less importance to them. Farmers cannot even keep livestock because the grazing land would soon become dry. 

In these villages, farmers have for years been growing maize, sorghum and millet as their staple food, while putting into practice all the agroecological farming techniques imparted to them from agriculture experts. 

What expert say 

With financial support from Bread for the World, Inades-Formation Tanzania, (IFTz) has been among the many organisations imparting farmers with the knowledge of best farming practices in the villages of Chemba and Kondoa district for the past five years. 

Due to the villages experiencing little rains, most of farmers are applying rain harvest practices and nine seeded holes techniques to keep moisture in their fields even with relatively little rains because this means that the water is not wasted out of their fields. 

These good farming techniques have enabled even farmers from the other villages of Isini and Gwandi in Chemba district to have at least some harvest each growing season. 

Michael Kihwele is the IFTz program officer responsible for agriculture, he recently advised farmers in these villages to come up with alternative sources of income for their survival. 

Kihwele who was in the village recently to assess the drought situation in the fields said should the rains come this March, farmers needed to start considering early maturity and drought resistant seeds, including having local sweet potato varieties. 

He said keeping chicken and goats was also another alternative way of enabling the farmers to mitigate the effects of climate change, so that they are not entirely dependent on farming. 

“This will help farmers to avert hunger as they will be able to sell chicken and goats and buy food from the neighbouring districts,” Kihwele noted. 

According to the IFTz Managing Director, Mbarwa Kivuyo, most of the project activities being implemented by his organization targets to the greater extent on improving the welfare of women in rural villages. 

Climate change and women  

Climate change impacts are affecting to the greater extent the majority rural women, because in an African culture, women are more responsible with household chores of ensuring water availability, food availability in the house and fetching of firewood. 

As Tanzania joins the World to celebrate the IWD, it is high time women are given the needed attention by ensuring that the government and other stakeholders get more involved in solving numerous challenges affecting their daily lives. 

This years’ theme is “Accelerate Action to collectively forge a more inclusive world for women,” which calls for action to unlock equal rights, power and opportunities for all, where no woman is left behind. 

The celebrations this year also marks the 30 years’ anniversary of the Beijing Declaration and platform for action, a blue-print endorsement for women’s and girls’ rights worldwide.

The Beijing action plan has helped to transform global rights of women and their agendas in terms of legal protection, access to services, their engagement, change in social norms, stereotypes and past ideas.  

Yet still, thirty years on, climate change impact continues to affect the majority women in Tanzania, denying them access to clean and safe drinking water, rendering them to food insecurity due to low productivity and denying them access to clean energy sources. 

Thus, women in rural villages are exposed to walking long distances in search of firewood for cooking due to high costs of clean energy use. 

Just like in many parts of Africa, women in the remote areas of Tanzania have the core duty of ensuring that food is always on the table regardless of water scarcity or unavailability of energy sources. 

Tanzania’s commitment to empower women 

According to a recent report, Women in Tanzania are still experiencing physical, sexual and other forms of gender-based violence. Previous reports cite significant prevalence of sextortion, affecting over 20 percent of individuals in academic institutions and workplaces. 

To ensure equal rights for all, Tanzania committed itself to ensuring equal participation between men and women in politics and leadership, availability of employment opportunities and education for women, respect and adequate protection of the human rights of women economic empowerment and poverty eradication. 

The initiatives have enabled many non-governmental organizations like Inades-Formation Tanzania to chip in by ensuring that women are economically empowered and are involved in decision making processes starting from the village level. 

Through village and Saving Loans, the groups which are mostly led by women, the Organization has helped women to have access to financial assistance from non-governmental organizations, including the government. 

It has also strived to ensure the majority rural women have access and use energy saving stoves, as a way of preventing deforestation and ensuring environmental conservation. 

The organization has also been able to empower women through poultry and livestock keeping while at the same time ensuring women in rural areas make their income using donkeys. 

Tanzania is likely to accelerate its economy if its majority population who are mostly women can be empowered and get involved in economic production activities including farming, livestock keeping and other means of production.