Intentional use of data has the potential to improve outcomes for smallholder farmers, and Cenfri is excited to be participating in a 36-month UN Joint Programme in Tanzania, championed by the Ministry of Agriculture and supported by UNCDF, IFAD and FAO. The programme will enable safe, practical data sharing between public and private digital agriculture systems to improve services and outcomes for smallholder farmers, with a focus on women and youth.

Why this matters

Many digital agriculture systems hold useful information but work in isolation. This limits the government’s and service providers’ ability to deliver timely, tailored support to farmers. By enabling systems to share data securely, the programme will improve coordination, reduce duplication and target services more effectively.

What we will do

Cenfri is mapping existing agricultural business processes and digital systems to identify where data is held and how it is used. Using those findings, the team will design a secure data-exchange architecture, an enterprise service bus that enables different platforms to connect, and develop practical demonstrations to show how shared data improves services.

The programme will also establish data-governance protocols, build technical capacity within partner institutions and support the design of a sustainable funding model for the data-exchange platform.

Key objectives of the programme

• Leverage the emerging data-governance framework to guide protocols for responsible data sharing
• Demonstrate interoperability between existing public-sector databases and enable integration with private-sector systems through defined use cases
• Facilitate sustainability by building technical capacity at project partners and supporting the design of a funding model for the data-exchange platform
• Identify and address critical preconditions necessary for data exchange between agricultural institutions
• Implement at least one to two viable use cases that deliver demonstrable value through public-to-public or public-to-private data sharing

Impact for farmers and government

The programme will enable secure data exchange and interoperability between digital agriculture systems, reducing duplication across government agencies and improving operational efficiency. It will support more targeted delivery of services to smallholder farmers, particularly women and youth, and demonstrate how shared data can inform government decision-making.