From Data Desert to Digital Dashboard: Lessons from Building Community-Grounded M&E in Tanzania's Sisal Value Chain

Sisal smallholders in Tanzania's Tanga Region face a persistent paradox: they are central to a globally traded commodity, yet almost entirely absent from the evidence systems that shape investment, policy, and development programming. Traditional M&E approaches — paper-based field surveys, periodic government agricultural censuses, donor-driven log frames — capture aggregate output but miss the human reality: which households are farming, who makes decisions, what constraints they face, and whether interventions are actually changing lives.

This session draws on RUSITA's direct experience attempting to build an evidence base where none previously existed. We examine three interrelated challenges: (1) the structural data desert facing smallholder cooperatives in sub-Saharan Africa; (2) the promise and limits of digital tools — including the MKonge Platform — for bridging this gap; and (3) the non-negotiable role of community trust, local language, and participatory verification in making digital data credible and actionable.

This is not a session about what AI can do in theory. It is a practitioner-led reflection on what happens when you try to bring structured data collection to a context of low digital literacy, intermittent connectivity, oral knowledge traditions, and deeply felt historical mistrust of external data extraction. Our lessons are offered not as a success story, but as an honest account of the tensions between efficiency and trust — and why resolving them requires centring community voice rather than optimising algorithms.