The objective of the project “Innovating Strategies to safeguard Food Security using Technology and Knowledge Transfer: A people-centred Approach” (Trans-SEC) is to improve the food situation for the most-vulnerable rural poor population in Tanzania. It is designed to identify successful food securing upgrading strategies and innovations along local and regional food value chains, test and adjust
them to site-specific, sustainable settings and tailor these concepts to be disseminated for national outreach. After the project lifetime, the results can be implemented at different levels of policy, extension and research. Trans-SEC applies the following steps in an iterative and partly recurrent procedure: (1) A stakeholder involvement process will be set up from the beginning as an integral part of most analytical steps; (2) case study sites within the focal regions Morogoro and Dodoma will be selected, set up and typologies of food value chains developed; (3) success stories of secure food production and/or good practice along the food value chains will be screened and inventoried; (4) an integrated in-depth analyses of food value chain components, their costs, benefits and impacts will be carried out; (5) a few of the most promising good practices with regard to positive impacts and implementation will be participatively discussed and identified for subsequent in-depth testing; (6) an in-depth participative field testing and/or analysis of selected, most promising technologies will be conducted for all food value chain components and requirements for implementation identified; (7) transferability and implementation capability will be assessed for different scenarios and for future condition simulations (model analysis); (8) a meta-model analysis including risk analysis and final proofing will identify hot spots of most sensitive, fragile regions and the potentials for alleviating food insecurity. Hence, the Trans-SEC main focus will be on local and regional food security, but the research design implies a national outreach for Tanzania as a whole. The research activities will be embedded into local and regional strategies to assess potential impacts and trade-offs and to be able to up-scale lessons learnt in a generic manner to regions with specific bio-physical, socio-cultural and economic conditions.
