Rain-making to Fishing experts from Vietnum: Disregard of our brilliance

Tanzania is known for its quick adoption and re-adoption without evaluation of past experience, this partly comes from our life long tradition of not reading. Our culture of hating to read makes us one of the leading country in thinking we have made discovery of what has been in shelves for centuries. It is often said that if you want to hide knowledge to a Tanzanian just put it in books because we lack the culture of reading. A couple of years when the then Prime minister visited Vietnum came back with the Idea of Inviting rain making experts to help us with the setting up the facilities to for rain business. The supposed invitation was hopefully mean to cost Tanzanians taxpayers huge costs for something that would have ended up in total failure. Thank God the project aborted in a dramatic fashion. After all Tanzania has no critical rain shortage as is Mali Kenya Namibia and some West African countris yet still investing rainmaking have never clicked in their minds. The Idea and technology of rain making in Africa in not new. CTA had published several articles about seeding specific type of clouds with ions which in turn form rains. It has been tried out in countries such as South Africa, Zimbabwe and some west African countries in the past fifteen or so years and found to be too costly but also uncontrollable due to preferences in certain type of clouds. This time around we have other fishing experts coming from Vietnum. The suppose of the new invitation aims at providing expertise to Tanzania in developing the Fishing industry. The bad thing is that what these people are coming to teach or introduce to us in not new. But they will end up being paid huge salaries that could Sustain the Institute for at least Several Months. We have brilliant experts at Mbegan Fishing training institute who are just being undermined by lack of proper funding. If our need is expertise we should send our own people to be trained in Vietnum because Teaching somebody a skill will make him or her independent. My advice to the top brass and the would be top is to throw the challenge to our scientists and researchers. Let us debate of what is keeping us where we are and why are we not moving. But also let us be ready to listen and enable our experts to deliver for I believe that we have the people who are just short of funds but have brilliant ideas that can move us from here to one of the leading economies in East and Southern Africa...... Yes ......we Can.

Ideas from the feld: Balanced Diet for the Poor: Vitamin A -rich maize

http://www.nature.com/ng/journal/v42/n4/full/ng.551.html

Balanced Diet for the Poor: Vitamin A -rich maize

Maize is a staple food to the majority of the poor, but lack of capacity to purchase nutrient or obtain from direct sources such as legumes and fruits, means their dishes are short of other nutrients such as vitamins and some proteins. However this problem could soon be hisotry due to the discovery of a new strains of maize that could cut vitamin A deficiency among people in developing countries. Developed using traditional breeding methods, the vitamin-fortified maize could be introduced instead of maize modified by genetic engineering, a process that continues to face objections. A New report in this week in Nature Genetics (22 March) that Scientist at HarvestPlus have identified rare variations of a gene known as crtRB1, which occur only in maize plants from temperate regions. These result in much higher production — up to 18 fold — of beta-carotene, the precursor and main source of dietary vitamin A. Using natural plant breeding, the researchers have now introduced these variations into tropical maize strains that are commonly grown in developing countries. Although the research is still at initial stage, it is a break-through which will soon help poor families to meet some level of dietary requirements at a cheaper price. full document can be viewed at http://www.nature.com/ng/journal/v42/n4/full/ng.551.html)