A Socio-Economic Profile of the Rufiji Floodplain and Delta.

Socio-economic profile of Rufiji flood plain and Delta - Vol. 1
Destination for non-timber forest products (mainly ukindu and milala) is both the local markets
(individual consumers, retailers/middlemen in Rufiji district) and outside markets of Zanzibar and Dar
es Salaam (individual consumers, retailers/middlemen of Dar es Salaam and Zanzibar).
Quantities of traded commodities are detailed in Appendix 5 (by AEZ) and a summary of the means of
the overall commodities traded is shown in table 49. Table 49 shows that there are variations in
quantities sold as indicated by the standard deviations (and the maximum and minimum numbers), and
the overall number of households involved in the trading process is small (ranges form 1 to 22).
Commodity traded by the highest number of households is prawn
3.8 Credit Availability
Table 50 shows that only 9% of respondents received credit. Inner Delta south has slightly
more villagers who received credit followed by North flood plain (Table 50).
Table 50: Proportion of respondents who received credit by AEZ
Inner Delta
North
(n=44)
Inner Delta
South
(n=15)
Delta North
(n=25)
Delta South
(n=30)
North Flood
Plain
(n=24)
South Flood
Plain
(n=13)
West
Valley
(n=30)
Total
(n=181)
Percent of Respondents
Yes 6.8 20.0 8.0 10.0 16.7 7.7 6.7 9.9
No 93.2 80.0 92.0 90.0 83.3 92.3 93.3 90.1
Source: Survey data (2000)
Those few who received credit were mainly in the form of cash, goats, fishnet and milling machine
(Table 51).
Table 51: Distribution of respondents by type of credit by AEZ
Inner Delta Inner Delta
North (n=3) South (n=3)
Delta North
(n=2)
Delta South
(n=3)
North Flood South Flood
Plain (n=4) Plain (n=1)
West
Valley
(n=2)
Total
(n=18)
Percent of Respondents
Cash 100.0 100.0 100.0 66.7 25.0 100.0 100.0 77.8
Milling
33.3 5.6
machine
Goats 50.0 11.1
Fishnet 25.0 5.6
Source: Survey data (2000)
The main sources of credits are itemised in table 52 which shows that most of the credit is from
individuals (i.e. friends, neighbours and relatives).
Field results from different parts of the country (Kashuliza et al. 1998:44, Senkondo 2000) have
shown that informal lending has made positive contributions to both consumption and production
activities of the rural people. However, the results suggest that informal lending is still far from being
a specialised activity, but rather a side activity integrated into other enterprise undertakings of various
farmers and businessmen. In addition, an organised informal lending in a form of traders or farmers’
association was not observed in the study area
48