Food imports bad for the economy, says UN

Dar es Salaam. Employing directly and indirectly about 65.5 per cent of Tanzanians, contributing 29 per cent to GDP and comprising 30 per cent of exports and 65 per cent of inputs to the industrial sector, agriculture is the veritable backbone of the Tanzanian economy.
But one could be forgiven for thinking that adequate public investment is being poured into the sector to add value to the livelihoods of at least 35 million Tanzanians.
Budgetary allocations in the agriculture sector are inadequate and have been the cause of its slow growth, making higher earnings for the rural population a far-fetched dream.
Worse still, poor investment in agriculture has made Tanzania in particular and Africa in general a net food importer, wasting the limited financial resources that could have been invested in the sector and create millions of jobs.
Lack of political will to invest in agriculture in Africa has led to a vicious cycle that could keep costing the continent billions of dollars annually.  
 The president of the UN’s International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), Mr Kanayo Nwanze, says Africa spends $35 billion a year to import food, money that could have been used to create jobs in agriculture. While Africa has a quarter of the world’s arable land, it only generates 10 per cent of global agricultural output.
“African leaders are failing their people by their weak investments in agricultural inputs and infrastructure, and their lack of policy support for the sector,” Mr Nwanze says in a speech he is expected to give at the sixth Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD) in Nairobi today.
Tanzania’s food import situation is worrying. Available statistics show that the country spent Sh885.8 billion ($421.8 million) on food and foodstuff imports in the 12 months between May 2015 and May 2016, according to the Bank of Tanzania.
This is equivalent to 88.5 per cent of the total budget for the agriculture sector in 2015/16.
Most of imports are food that is not adequately produced in the country such as wheat and of processed food products such as oil, sugar, dairy and poultry products.  
“If even a portion of the money used for food imports was spent on creating jobs in rural areas, not only would the world’s largest youth population see a viable future on the continent, but Africa would be able to feed itself,” Mr Nwanze adds in his speech sent to newsrooms in advance yesterday.
Tanzania spends significant resources on food imports despite the fact that the country is considered food self-sufficient with food production exceeding 100 per cent of demand “in years of adequate rainfall”.
Tabling the 2016/17 agriculture budget earlier this year in Dodoma, Mr Mwigulu Nchemba, who was then in charge of the Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries docket, said Tanzania had a food surplus of 2.6 million tonnes following more than adequate rains and harvests during the 2013/14 and 2014/15 farming seasons.
The country harvested about 15.5 million tonnes of food in 2014/15 (to be consumed in the 2015/16 financial year). Among these, 8.9 million tonnes were grain and 6.6 million tonnes non-cereal harvests.
The total food demand in 2015/16 was 12.9 million tonnes (8.2 million cereal and 4.8 non cereal)
“Food supply analysis shows that Tanzania is food sufficient by 120 per cent, down from 125 per cent in 2014/15,” said Mr Nchemba, who has since moved to the Home Affairs docket.
Among the 25 Mainland regions, however, only nine regions had food surplus, six were food sufficient and six had food shortages in the period under review, he added.  Despite good harvests, at least 69 district face serious food shortages.
Experts say famine persists in Tanzania due to extreme poverty as well as poor infrastructure and inadequate distribution channels.
Poor investment in agriculture has affected the growth of the sector through the years.
In 2014, the sector grew by 3.4 per cent and declined to 2.3 per cent in 2015. These are some of the lowest growth figures of all economic activities in Tanzania.
In contrast, in 2015 the construction sector grew by 16.8 per cent, mining and quarrying 9.1 per cent and finance and insurance 11.8 per cent.




Budgetary allocations for the sector have also been on a downward spiral.
Despite a commitment made by Tanzania and other African countries in July 2003 at the African Union (AU) summit in Maputo Mozambique to increase investments in agriculture to at least 10 per cent of the total national budgets, allocations in the sector have remained low.
Allocations in the sector in the last ten years (2006/7-2015/16) in Tanzania have averaged 6 per cent of the total budget.
In the 2016/17, about Sh1.56 trillion, equivalent to 4.9 per cent of the budget, was allocated to the agriculture sector. This is a slight increase from the Sh1,001.4 billion for 2015/16 and Sh1,084.7 billion for 2014/15.
Investment in agriculture pales in comparison to budgetary allocation in other sectors.
In the 2016/17 fiscal year, for example, the transport sector received Sh5.45 trillion (25.4 per cent of total budget). About Sh1.13 trillion (5.3 per cent) was allocated for development projects in the electricity sub-sector, while Sh4.77 trillion, equivalent to 22.1 per cent of the total budget, was allocated for the education sector, according to the Minister of Finance and Planning, Dr Philip Mpango.
The TICAD meeting has been convened with the purpose of promoting high-level policy dialogue between Japan and Africa.
The meeting will also see the launch of Japan’s Initiative for Food and Nutrition Security in Africa, which aims to establish a framework for African countries to collaborate to improve their nutrition status.