There is a wide collection of invaluable varie-ties of ornamental plants and flowers available for sale by vendors in Arusha city contributing to local employment, and food security. Horticulture in Tanzania is dominated by small scale farmers in Arusha that contribute to about 70% of the produces in the sector. However, there are challenges that need to be addressed including; inadequate information for the development of the sector and livelihoods of the vendors. The information on the varied species of ornamental plants and flowers are mainly undocumented and not digitized. This limits access to the scientific community and the general public bringing on these varieties in Arusha a growing conservation concern. The other challenge is that the small-scale vendors have limited visibility to regional markets and international market places which hinders their business growth. On this study, a Web portal was developed for inventory, mapping and digitization of the various species of ornamental plants and flowers as a solution to above challenges. Data collection was conducted using various data collection techniques such as; Interviews, observations, Questionnaire (Open Data Kit) and re-viewing numerous research papers in seven wards of Arusha city where the vendors grow and sell a number of species of ornamental plants and flowers. Both qualitative and quantitative methods mentioned above were deployed to provide insights on the ornamental plants and flower business operations. For the survey, 70 varieties of ornamental plants and flowers were gathered and arranged categorically in terms of taxonomy and usage and uploaded on the portal. The portal developed indicates the potential to help stakeholders find plants’ and flowers’ varieties infor-mation, images, and sales location online, the vendors will be able to advertise their products on the portal and conduct business with customers online. In addition, it will also help Arusha City Representatives with baseline information on the sector to make informed plans and decisions.

Globally, applications of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) in services management and delivery have positively transformed various sectors of economies. Similar transformations have been witnessed in Tanzania, where mobile money and the Internet have transformed the way businesses are done. However, the transformations have not taken place across all sectors of the Tanzanian economy with some sectors lagging further behind than others. Cultural heritage sector, in particular, has been slow in leveraging ICT to transform the delivery of services.    The sector is characterized by poor consumption of heritage sites and artworks, neglect, low publicity, weak branding, to mention a few. Although the achieved level of skills in Internet and Web have enabled the proliferation of many useful Websites which offer services to the public, information gathering remains a huge challenge considering the size of the country, its cultural heritage from 126 tribes and the vast nature reserves. 

We have investigated the usefulness of Web services in promoting mechanisms to gather and disseminate information about e-Cultural Heritage in Tanzania. In our investigation, we analyzed stakeholders of the sector and realized that Web services can be used to foster mechanisms within specific groups using crowdsourcing techniques. We then proposed specific Web services that cater for information flow chain of Tanzanian's artwork industry and developed an e-cultural heritage portal for demonstration. 

We tested the system with a sample of selected stakeholders and the initial results indicated that the locals’ readiness for such a system is strong enough and that apart from developers benefiting from the Web services, accessibility of information and stakeholders’ visibility will improve.