Neil D. Burgess, Paul Harrison, Peter Sumbi, James Laizer, Adam ...

SOCIO-ECONOMIC BASELINE: TANZANIA’S COASTAL FORESTS 2011
5.4 Revenue Collection from Forests in the Coastal Districts
Most of the royalties are collected from sales of forest goods obtained from forests on the public
lands or within district forest reserves. Rufiji district has the highest reported revenue collection
compared to other districts. This was attributed to its proximity to Dar es Salaam where there is high
demand of wood based products including charcoal. Moreover, the district has good road networks
encouraging transportation of the forest products. Studies in Rufiji district have indicated that forest
products are also being produced and illegally sold without revenue been collected (WWF 2010).
Table 27: Revenue Collected from Coastal Forests in the Selected Districts
Collected amount in a district in USD
Rufiji Kilwa Lindi Unguja Pemba
Total revenue collected 733,333 82,000 47,162 - -
5.5 Overview
In the focal landscapes of the GEF Coastal Forests project an average 79% of the population was
married in 2011, with low cases of divorce across the area. With an exception of the Magharibi
(Zanzibar) and Lindi (mainland) districts, where the number of widows was high, the remaining
districts had low number of widows. About half of the population has completed primary school, and
about 30% has not received any formal education. With low levels of education, opportunities for
income generation often mean relying on natural resource such as the forest, fisheries, and
agriculture. Those who are considered ‘well-off’ typically had more access to education
opportunities (Shemdoe and Abdalah 2011).
The amount of land owned and/or used varies between communities. Within Kilifi, Lindi and Rufiji,
the average land size owned by individual households ranged from 2.8 to 6.1 acres with the overall
mean land size being 4.8 acres. The main use of the land is crop production and very small areas of
land are set aside for woodlots. The most common crops are maize and rice; average land area used
for maize production ranges from 0.6 acres to 2.2 acres with an average of 1.6 acres. For rice, the
land area used ranges from 0.3 acres to 1.8 acres with an average of 1.1 acres (Shemdoe and
Abdalah 2011).
Households have set aside small areas for woodlots because wood resources such as charcoal,
firewood and other related wood products are obtained from surrounding forests. Lack of inputs for
agricultural production limit the de facto access to land to the few well-off groups leaving a majority
of the poor households with small areas of used land (Shemdoe and Abdalah 2011).
Animals are a source of food, more specifically, protein for human diets and income. For low-income
producers, livestock can serve as store of wealth (Shemdoe and Abdalah 2011). In these districts,
livestock keeping in the studied communities include cow, goat and poultry (chicken and duck). In
these districts, the average number of cows ranges from 0 to 1 and average number of goats are
between 1 and 2. Most of the livestock (mainly goats) are owned by the well-off group, followed by
the middle group, and then the poor. The poor were mainly confined to keeping smaller stock such
as goats and chicken.
The majority (86%) of households live in houses that are grass thatched, with 56% having wellthatched
grass and 31% having dilapidated grass thatch. Moreover, majority of these houses were
constructed using poles, which are among timber products derived from the forests. In the surveyed
villages in these districts, only 12% of the interviewed households possess houses that are roofed
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