 The Private Sector and Civil Society Agricultural Working Group sees itself as a forum of civil society organizations and private sector representatives who wants to identify what works and what does not in the efforts to promote agricultural development in Tanzania, and to advocate for best practices in the agricultural sector in this country. It was formed in mid-2006. Its members include VECO Tanzania, MVIWATA, PELUM, Oxfam GB, Oxfam Ireland, MS Tanzania, Concern Worldwide, the Agricultural Council of Tanzania, Tanzania Organic Agriculture Movement (TOAM), ActionAid and private companies such as Katami Ltd. The PSCSAWG aadvocates for a pro poor and conducive agriculture policy and business environment where CSOs and the private sector effectively engage with and influence agriculture sector policies and practices. It provides effective analysis of existing agriculture policies and providing alternative views/directions, and provides a platform for learning, sharing, networking and coalition building around best practices and key issues in the agriculture sector.
Documentation
As many other organisations, the members of PSCSAWG have been engaged in the agricultural sector with various results. However, the successes and failures of these engagements have largely remained limited to themselves. There has been yet no consistent system and mechanism in place to capture best practices and lessons learned from these initiatives. As they mentioned, the results have been a missed opportunity on the part of all actors to draw on the best practices and innovations and to avoid duplication of efforts, respources and avoid mistakes that hinder development. It is on this background that the group decided to train a few people within th PSCSAWG so that they have the necessary skills to document and train others on how to document.
  ILEIA was therefore invited to run a documentation workshop. This took place during the third week of July 2007 in Dar es Salaam, involving representatives of all the member organisations. As part of the exercise, all participants worked on the documentation of Concern's project "Empowering citizens to claim their right to land". The results of this exercise are available here. Later on, some of the member organisations of PSCSAWG started their own documentation process. One of these is Katani Ltd.
Read more about Katani's documentation experience here.
In July 2007, the Private Sector Civil Society Agricultural Working Group commissioned a Public Expenditure Tracking Study (PETS) in four randomly selected districts. The findings will be used to inform allocations and practices in public funds management. These were shared with a range of stakeholders together with the results of the different documentation efforts, in the "Forum for Learning and Experience Sharing" which took place in Tanga between the 19th and the 22nd of November, 2007. The purpose of the event is to share an understanding of what is actually working in the agricultural sector in Tanzania and show this through presentation of cases. The plan is to make the forum an
annual event.
The results of this workshop are available on the website of the Forum for Learning and Experience Sharing, www.bestpractices.or.tz 
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