Research

1.4    Development Planning and Management
1.4.1    Background Information
The contribution of research in rural development and planning cannot be over emphasized. The main goal of research is to serve as an instrument through which to improve rural people’s living standards by stimulating growth and increased productivity in critical productive sectors of the rural economy. The rural sector in Tanzania hosts a large segment of the population and employs over 70% of population in the agricultural sector. However, most of the crops produced undergo minimum processing and value addition. In this view, the drive to achieve rural development which is intended to improve livelihood of the majority Tanzanians will not be realized if we do not overcome the development challenges facing the rural communities such as provision of social services, poverty reduction, improvement of infrastructure, income inequality reduction, equipping rural people with entrepreneurship skills and rural industrialization, to mention a few. In this context, rural development planning in Development Studies Institute of the Sokoine University of Agriculture is focused more on strategic decisions to intervene these challenges through research.

1.4.2 Goal
The goal is to stimulate growth and increase productivity in critical productive sectors of rural economy through proper rural development planning in order to address poverty and improve peoples’ wellbeing.

Specifically the rural development planning research agenda in DSI is focused on the following key research areas.
i.    Productivity growth in the rural sector, income inequality and provision of social services;
ii.    Rural industrialization and the role of institutions in rural development;
iii.    Entrepreneurship, SMEs, technology innovation, trade and market linkages in the rural sector; and
iv.    Poverty reduction, Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) and post Millennium Development Goals.