Jan B Hansen

Why Establish a University in Karagwe? KARUCO – Karagwe University College The aim of establishing KARUCO is to prepare young people from Tanzania to build entrepreneurial Agri-business committed to sustainability and social justice – - That will bring social and economic transformation to Karagwe and surrounding areas. Why Entrepreneurial Agri-business? Agriculture is the backbone of the Tanzanian economy. More than 90% of people in Karagwe are small-scale farmers and more than 80% of all Tanzanians rely on agriculture to live from day to day. Most farm for subsistence. These people face overwhelming challenges including depleted soils, poor seeds, lack of clean water, lack of access to meaningful markets, and confining roles especially for women who toil, fetch water and supplies but are removed from ... read more

The focus of this final photo journal entry for the "Karagwe Unplugged Trip" is "Building KARUCO". Building KARUCO means many things - building the campus; developing the program; establishing the infrastructure needed; building financial capacity through ETI - to name a few. This entry however focuses on the actual bricks and mortar. Speaking of which, take a good look at the rock foundation. All hand- cut rock- I can still hear the hammer. It looks beautiful. This set of blog entries - Karagwe Unplugged- is Educate Tanzania's attempt to provide a virtual tour of Karagwe using the beautiful images of Ashley Miller of AshMill Photography. Http:/... read more

The focus of this photo journal entry is "People Posing (3)". There are few things as beautiful as Tanzanians going about life as they do, and therefore few things as lovely as capturing their candid moments. Having said that there are some wonderful opportunities to line up, gather people together, and memorialize events, meetings, and gatherings by taking an organized photo of the group. Ashley was asked repeatedly to do this conventional task although her real strengths seemed to lie with her less conventional keen eye for detail, design, and capturing Tanzanian life close-up and personal. When I looked at the group photos all together - as one- I was struck with the amount of work Drs. Bagonza and Katabaro put into organizing so many groups to meet with the Educate Tanzania team, and struck with ... read more

The focus of this photo journal entry is "The People". What could possibly be more interesting than people? We start with a compelling photo of a young girl transporting a small bag on her head. The caption asks you to imagine your life activities and then replace 75% of them with the one activity of transporting things from Point A to Point B. Walking. Mostly this activity 'belongs' to the girls we know who walk between 4-7 miles per day to fetch water. One upside is the galvanized friendships forged on the walk. The downsides are too numerous to mention in this blog but two biggies are 1) not being able to attend school and 2) roadside dangers some of which result in pregnancy. On a lighter note, don't miss the faces of the child-onlookers who ... read more

The focus of this photo journal entry is the second entry on "Foods". See previous blog for particulars of crops of Karagwe - beautiful banana, coffee, pineapple, sugar, avacado, tomato, potato, cassava, maize, papaya, mango, and trees to name some staples. As I said in my last entry, challenges, due to limited broad-based understanding of some basics such as pest control, irrigation, mulching, crop rotation, seed selection, and marketing strategies, include the farmers not getting large yields or returns on their harvested crops. Most are subsistence farmers aching for new ways to go about crop production, crop conservation, and harvest-to-market techniques. This is where the comprehensive plan for KARUCO - Karagwe University College comes in. Dr. Benson Bagonza founded KARUCO - Karagwe University College to address the need for improved agriculture. His concept ... read more