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 financingagreement for regional funds was signed in March 1997. It is complemented by national financingagreements covering Uganda, Ethiopia and Kenya (signed in September 1996). The total of the FinancialAgreements for FITCA is 20,000,000 EURO. By an exchange of letters signed in January 2001, theproject period has been extended to the 31.12.2003.FITCA has three major country programmes (Uganda, Ethiopia and Kenya) that are being coordinatedregionally. 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 ofregional activities (research, training and environmental monitoring). It is also endowed with resourcesto provide financial and technical support to Tanzania, Rwanda and Burundi. Technical assistance isprovided 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 theregion through coordination of national activities to ensure sustainable rural development. The generalpurpose is to improve the well being of the rural population and the health of livestock throughsustainable 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 toincrease farmers' income through higher productivity (animals and crops) in order to enable them to payfor inputs needed to sustain various control schemes against tsetse, ticks or other pests after the end ofthe 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 capacitybuilding at central and regional levels. Organisational and management capacity of staff todesign and co-ordinate tsetse control programmes shall be strengthened by the end of theproject.- In Kenya the emphasis is put on increased livestock productivity through intensification of thecrop/livestock production system. In the long term, increased income from livestock willprovide the incentive and the means for sustainable tsetse control.- In Uganda the project is a continuation of the former sleeping sickness control campaign. Itaims at a sustainable and co-ordinated approach to disease control involving sleeping sicknesscontrol, community-based tsetse control and animal trypanosomosis control.Project implementation for the regional component and the Kenya program started in March 1999. TheUganda program started in the summer of the same year, while the Ethiopia program, which was redesignedin 1999, started early 2000 with a preparatory year procurement and beginning of 2001 withimplementation of the 1' WP & CE. Although intense negotiations have been held in Tanzania andRwanda, 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 FITCAcountries; (2) defining the environmental parameters and assessing the environmental impact, -promoting environmental awareness and exchange information; (3) strengthening community capacityfor environmental management and monitoring; (4) adapting /developing appropriate methodologies forenvironmental monitoring and management.