Envoy to Tanzanians: Take a leaf from others

Dar es Salaam. Tanzania’s Ambassador to The Hague, Netherlands, Ms Irene Kasyanju, has implored Tanzanians to seize opportunities and strive to learn from successes of other nations. Ms Kasyanju told journalists directly from The Hague that the experience she has had in the Netherlands drives her into beseeching Tanzanians to explore and seize opportunities that come their way.

Agriculture, she explains, is the mainstay of the Dutch economy, adding that the Dutch are heavily and seriously involved in advanced and highly mechanised potato, dairy, poultry, piggery and horticultural farming.

She said successes and opportunities were abound in many nations and that Tanzanians only need to be ready to rise to the unfolding opportunities besides learning from them.

Giving the example of the Netherlands where she has been for three years now, Ms Kasyanju said she has learnt that the seriousness of the Dutch and their devotion to work has turned their small European country into on e of the world’s economic heavyweights. The Netherlands is a small country with 41,543 square kilometres and a population of 17.02 million while Tanzania is 22 times bigger than the Netherlands. Yet, the Netherlands is the world’s second biggest exporter of agricultural products.

after the US, she explained.

The Ambassador further explained that the Netherlands was one of the top 10 world’s potato producing countries-- one of the seven European countries in that group.

Although there has a been continuous decline in potato production in most European countries, she said, with a highly mechanised agriculture the Netherlands devotes almost 25 per cent of its agricultural land to potato production and the Dutch have broken the world’s potato yield record of more than 45 tonnes per hectare.

The Netherlands leads in the sales of approved potato seed in the world and sells about 1,000,000 metric tonnes a year because, she said, it has more than 500 approved varieties of Irish potatoes.

The Netherlands has sold to Tanzania seven potato varieties, thus making a total of 11 varieties in Tanzania has far.

She said a number of Dutch companies have shown interest in potato production in the country and they are the kind of companies with expertise and capability in processing and marketing the produce.

Tanzania and the Netherlands have also agreed to establish a Centre for Development of the Potato Industry in Tanzania (CD-PIT) in Uyole area in the environs of Mbeya City. The government has set aside 30 hectares for the proposed centre.

Before going to The Hague, Ms Kasyanju served as a senior Foreign Service Officer at the Permanent Mission of the United Republic of Tanzania to the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland from 1999 to 2005.