Executive SummaryTumaini University at Iringa, Tanzania, started a new B.Sc. program in IT in 2007. In the course of planning and implementation of the program, we found out that standard ACM/IEEE IT curricula are not adequate for an IT program in a poor, developing country. The standard curricula describe, in detail, the competences that IT specialists in industrialized countries should possess, but the special characteristics of developing countries require a plethora of additional skills and competences that IT professionals in developing countries should have.The environment-natural, cultural, and technical-of developing countries brings about issues that IT specialists in industrialized countries do not know much about. Inadequate ICT and electrical infrastructure cause hardware to malfunction, wear out, and break; a hostile natural environment causes problems with equipment and eventually destroys it; quirks of local manufacturing and procurement complicate acquisitions; counterfeit products, inexistent customer care, and lack of warranty make purchases risky; excessively complex customs and shipping procedures make foreign acquisitions painful; widespread problems with corruption make accounting tricky; and lack of qualified staff is a systemic problem.In industrialized countries there is a high level of specialization and separation of professionals and their tasks, and one can easily delegate parts of a project to consultants. But in Tanzaniaespecially in rural Tanzania-there usually are no specialists available. IT professionals have to be able to do a large number of rudimentary tasks outside the field of IT. The most common tasks concern electrical installations, telephony, architectural design, structural modifications to buildings, protection from forces of nature, and all kinds of installation-related construction tasks.In an attempt to make IT education in our university relevant to the local environment and socioeconomic context, we have pinpointed four areas of IT curriculum that we have had to re-think. Firstly, the pedagogical approach must resonate with students' and teachers' learning styles. Secondly, the scope of IT education must be broader than the scope of IT education in industrialized countries. Thirdly, selection and emphasis of topics must meet the needs of Tanzanian society. Fourthly, all kinds of cultural, technical, environmental, and other contextual issues must be understood and taken into account in curriculum and course design.

The physicochemical properties of honey harvested from popular honey-producing areas in Tanzania were investigated. Honey from Shibe-Dodoma had the highest values of specific gravity, total acidity, free fatty acid content, diastatic number, overall acceptability, and lowest hydroxymethyl-furfural (HMF) level as compared to honey samples from other areas. There was no significant difference (p > 0.05) in terms of HMF in the other honey samples from Tanga, Morogoro, Same, Arusha, and Tabora. HMF levels in all honey samples were far below the maximum acceptable level of 40 mg/kg as recommended by the Codex Alimentarius Commission Standards before storage for 6 months. No traces of streptomycin and phenol were detected in all honey samples. It was concluded that according to the values of the studied quality parameters, the types of Tanzanian honey obtained from the popular honey producing areas may be judged to be of high quality.

No abstract

A study was conducted to determine consumer acceptable proportions of flours in sorghum (var. serena) and maize or sorghum, maize and cassava composite flours. Breeder's serena flour extracted at 75 percent was mixed at various proportions with maize or with maize and cassava to constitute composite flours. The various composite flours were made into stiff porridge and presented to a group of panellists for sensory evaluation. The evaluation was conducted by scoring on a hedonic scale of 0-5 for poor to excellent, respectively, for the parameters colour, texture, flavour, taste and overall acceptability. The responses were analysed statistically. Alternatively the panellists were allowed to eat ad-lib any of the presented samples which appealed to them. The results demonstrated that slight incorporation (< 10%) of sorghum (var. serena) to maize flour leads to reduction in consumer acceptability. However, increased incorporation of sorghum in excess of 10 percent leads to no significant decrease in consumer acceptability until a level of 30 percent incorporation is exceeded. In sorghum, maize, cassava composite flours the formulation of 30:40:30, respectively, was found to be most acceptable. It is suggested that at this combination of flours desirable textural characteristics of the porridge overrides other factors in contributing to its acceptability.

No abstract