Mid-term Review of the Farming in Tse tse Controlled Areas (FITCA) Programme.

FITCA is an on-going programme financed with EDF regional and national funds. A 4 year financing agreement for regional funds was signed in March 1997. It is complemented by national financing agreements covering Uganda, Ethiopia and Kenya (signed in September 1996). The total of the Financial Agreements for FITCA is 20,000,000 EURO. By an exchange of letters signed in January 2001, the project period has been extended to the 31.12.2003. FITCA has three major country programmes (Uganda, Ethiopia and Kenya) that are being coordinated regionally. The Regional Tsetse Co-ordination Unit (RTCU) based in the Organisation of African Unity / Inter African Bureau for Animal Resources (OAU/IBAR), is also responsible for the coordination of regional activities (research, training and environmental monitoring). It is also endowed with resources to provide financial and technical support to Tanzania, Rwanda and Burundi. Technical assistance is provided to each of these four components (3 major country projects plus the regional one). The Overall Objective of the Programme is to contribute to the socio economic development of the region through coordination of national activities to ensure sustainable rural development. The general purpose is to improve the well being of the rural population and the health of livestock through sustainable rural development, and to improve the implementation capacity in the countries concerned. FITCA is not designed as just another tsetse control project. The basis of the FITCA programme is to increase farmers' income through higher productivity (animals and crops) in order to enable them to pay for inputs needed to sustain various control schemes against tsetse, ticks or other pests after the end of the project. FITCA helps to pave the way for a more commercially oriented rural economy and keeping in mind the same general approach. As the individual country projects purposes differ considerably they are listed here by country: - In Ethiopia the focus is on the rehabilitation of sustainable mixed farming and on capacity building at central and regional levels. Organisational and management capacity of staff to design and co-ordinate tsetse control programmes shall be strengthened by the end of the project. - In Kenya the emphasis is put on increased livestock productivity through intensification of the crop/livestock production system. In the long term, increased income from livestock will provide the incentive and the means for sustainable tsetse control. - In Uganda the project is a continuation of the former sleeping sickness control campaign. It aims at a sustainable and co-ordinated approach to disease control involving sleeping sickness control, community-based tsetse control and animal trypanosomosis control. Project implementation for the regional component and the Kenya program started in March 1999. The Uganda program started in the summer of the same year, while the Ethiopia program, which was redesigned in 1999, started early 2000 with a preparatory year procurement and beginning of 2001 with implementation of the 1' WP & CE. Although intense negotiations have been held in Tanzania and Rwanda, no activities have been financed in those countries yet. The Environmental Monitoring and Management Component (EMMC) has been contracted out to ILRI. Its purpose is to increase the level of information and awareness of environmental change by: (1) increasing the capacity to response pro-actively to these changes amongst the stakeholders in FITCA countries; (2) defining the environmental parameters and assessing the environmental impact, - promoting environmental awareness and exchange information; (3) strengthening community capacity for environmental management and monitoring; (4) adapting /developing appropriate methodologies for environmental monitoring and management.