THE CONTRIBUTION OF PRIVATE FOREST MANAGEMENT TO AN INDIVIDUAL’S DEVELOPMENT AT HALLA VILLAGE

Mr. Joachim Tambo was born in 1937 in southern part of Tanzania; He owns a private forest of about 500 hectares at Halla village in Babati District. He has managed to protect and conserve a forest and have individual development. Before, he lived a low life standard with insufficient income.

In 1985 he started planting trees which enabled him to preserve water sources. The water source has been used by Babati Water Supply (BAWASA) to distribute water to four villages such as Kashi and Galapo. The distributed water has enabled Mr Joachim and the four villages to practice garden activities, few of which are “sukuma wiki”, salad and cabbages gardens.


Halla forest has lead to the catchment of enough rainfall. The rainfall has enabled Mr Joachim and the people around that area to engage themselves in cultivation of food crops for subsistence and commercial use. The selling of the food products enabled Mr. Joachim and his community member to earn enough income.
Mr. Joachim is also making a good business out of his forest since the forest has been a source raw materials like wood/timber and one log of timber is sold at about 5, 000 Tsh and one tree is not less than 300, 000. The forest has reduced the cost of buying firewood since the family members have been getting firewood from the forest and thus leading to individual development. The local people have been also attaining development since Mr Joachim’s timber is cheap and so enhance people ability to build houses.

The forest has been acting as visitor’s attraction. People from different places do come to see how Mr Joachim manages more than 500 hectares, what the advantages of conservation forest are, what the challenges he is facing are and how he manages to overcome them. Such visits have been one of his sources of income since an individual or groups do pay a certain fee for the service and also welcome Mr Joachim to their workshop and pay him allowance.

If Mr. Joachim could benefit and get individual development from the Halla forest, it’s possible for everyone to have a private forest and gain more than him. This will enable Tanzanians to get rid of low standard of life. Everyone CAN, if there is determination to say NO to low living standards and have a private forest.


BY SAMWEL MFANGA (YET-2011)