Agriculture could do wonders for Tanzania

Editorial Cartoon

That agriculture is Tanzania’s economic lynchpin has perhaps been the most common slogan expounded by the country’s leaders for many decades now.

It is argued that the country has abundant fertile land for people to engage in agricultural activities and grow abundant food crops to satisfy the nation’s requirements.

However, this is easily said than done; for now and then Tanzanians have faced food shortages which sometimes made it necessary for the country to divert funds to buy food or seek aid from Good Samaritans.

And although for the past two years the country’s economy has grown by about seven percent, the agricultural sector did so by only 4.3 percent.

These figures were given by none other than a government minister Steven Masatu Wasira, the Minister of State in the President’s Office (Relations and Coordination) during the current budget session.

We support his suggestion that to help the agricultural sector grow more, investments should be made, especially in adding value to agricultural products, a measure which would also boost incomes of farmers.

For instance, some raw crops are now exported to be processed in foreign countries. They are sold at throw-away prices, leaving farmers worse off. A case in point is cashew nuts, mostly grown in Mtwara and Lindi regions, where some farmers are complaining that they are getting back very little for their effort.

India where the cashew nuts are processed and re-exported to Tanzania and other countries, has established factories and created jobs for its people.
If the process were done in Tanzania we could have created more activities and jobs.

This also applies to crops like cotton and sisal, to name but two which were being processed internally during their heydays. But, for one reason or another, these factories no longer exist.
The reason for this state of affairs is not the subject of this editorial. However, we believe that we might give a thought to reviving the former factories now.

We have strong reasons for floating this idea. Among them is that we can now look back to see where we went wrong and chart the way forward.
We should learn from our past mistakes and amend them in order to start a new chapter. Many of the factories privatized to individuals no longer function as in the past.

Some of these have changed functions and are being used as mere godowns to store imported goods, contrary to what they were meant for.
Further, there are now sufficient people with expertise in the country who can manage these factories.

The number of graduates in various fields coming out of the country’s universities annually or technicians from vocational institutes are on the increase and keen to be engaged.

These are in their thousands, and could be employed in these factories to add value to our crops which are now being exported from the country exports in raw form.

We are certain that if this is done, agriculture could make a greater contribution to Tanzania’s economy than it is able to presently. We must stop paying lip service to agriculture. 

SOURCE: THE GUARDIAN