Efficiency in the Implementation of District Agricultural Development Plans in the Southern Highlands of Tanzania

Rural development has been a major focus of development endeavors of many developing countries, understandably due to the big share of the population that lives in rural areas and is employed in agriculture. Subsequently, many rural development programmes are formulated to address the low agricultural productivity caused by inefficient input use, which leads to rural poverty and food insecurity. A study was conducted to measure the technical efficiency of 31 District Agricultural Development Plans of five regions of the Southern Agricultural Growth Corridor in Tanzania using a dataset on agricultural production and inputs for the 2018/19 agricultural year. Data for five input variables (land, labor, farm machinery, fertilizers, and seeds) and two output variables (crops and livestock) were extracted and analyzed using the Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) framework. It was found that on average, the districts produced 71% of the maximum attainable output for a given input level. In terms of percentage distribution, a relatively lower proportion of the sampled Districts (48%) attained full efficiency. This implies that there exist technical inefficiencies in many Districts within the SAGCOT. The policy implication of these results is that there is considerable room for improving the DADPs in terms of design, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation using the best available technology.