TZ agriculture gets Sh200bn boost

Dar es Salaam. The Board of Directors of the African Development Fund (ADF) has approved a loan of $93.51 million (over Sh200 billion) for on-lending to the Tanzania Agricultural Development Bank (TADB).

The funding will contribute to supporting Tanzania’s agriculture sector and achieving the country’s development goals, the African Development Bank (AfDB) said in a statement.

The ADF is the concessional window of the AfDB Group which providing concessional funding for projects and programs, as well as technical assistance for studies and capacity-building activities.

Concluding his remarks following the Board discussions, the AfDB President Akinwumi Adesina underscored that: “The TADB is expected to play a key role in facilitating attainment of sustainable food self-sufficiency and food security in Tanzania and in promoting and supporting the transformation of agriculture from subsistence to commercial farming in order to effectively and sustainably contribute to inclusive economic growth and poverty reduction.”

The TADB is a national development finance institution, the mission of which is to develop the agriculture sector in Tanzania. The sector provides employment for about 67 per cent of the population and has big potential for expansion given the abundance of arable land and the availability of inland water resources.

“….The sector needs to be developed if Tanzania is to achieve sustainable economic development and poverty reduction. Specifically, in order for the country to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals and its Tanzania Development Vision 2025, the agriculture sector must sustainably grow at over 10 per cent per annum. Unfortunately, over the past ten years, the sector has grown at an average of 4.4 per cent per annum and contributed an average of 29.3 per cent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP),” the statement explained.

These rates have recently declined to 3.2 per cent per annum and 26 per cent of GDP (Q2 2016), respectively.

A major problem facing the country’s agriculture sector is the unavailability of medium to long-term finance to support, among other things, agricultural production, processing and marketing.

The TADB is designed to address this through the provision of much-needed funding to a sector that is key to the country’s development.