INTEGRITY FIRST : Has Kilimo Kwanza initiative failed?

With all contradicting statements from our politicians, no doubt Tanzania is on the brink of hunger disaster now and probably the situation will worsen if there will still be below average rainfall across the country. Hunger in Africa, including Tanzania, has been a recurring phenomenon. After every 10 years we must experience a certain degree of hunger due to various reasons, including climate change.

No phase of government that completed its term in office without being faced with food shortages that plunged the country into a hunger crisis. Sometimes food insecurity is caused by drought and sometimes by floods. What should we as nation do to alleviate hunger? This is my focus in today’s article.

Kilimo Kwanza is likely to fail just as others did

In Tanzania since the 1960s to date, everyone knows that agriculture is the basis of our development. This is so because agriculture engages about 70 per cent of the economically active population, in particular those living in rural areas.

However, President John Magufuli’s emphasis is on industrialised Tanzania by 2025. But still no country can go on ignoring modernised agriculture and then become industrialised country and later become a middle income country as our dreams are now 2025.

From the first phase government of Mwalimu Julius Nyerere until the fourth one under Jakaya Kikwete, agriculture was stressed as the backbone of the country’s economy, albeit it is done by the majority with small-scale farming.

For 55 years of independence of this nation, many initiatives and programmes on agriculture have been launched for the purpose of improving agriculture, but without much success in making it produce food security and self-sufficiency.

Furthermore, all times, Chama cha Mapinduzi (CCM) election manifestos never left agriculture behind. For instance, CCM manifesto of 2015-2020, promises Tanzanians that the government will increase area of irrigation schemes from the current 461,326 hectares to one million hectares by 2020. Good enough, the budget for agriculture has been increasing enormously.

For instance, in the financial year 2010/2011, the budget of agriculture increased from Sh903.8 billion to Sh1.08 trillion in 2014/15. This means that the government has been doing a lot in boosting agriculture although more efforts are needed to make it profitable. But why our agriculture has never changed with all those initiatives? Something must be wrong somewhere.

Mwalimu Nyerere’s emphasis on agriculture was not in words only. Apart from political willingness that was accompanied with political slogans like Siasa ni Kilimo (Agriculture is Politics) and Kilimo Cha Kufa na Kupona (Agriculture is Doing and Dying Activity), Mwalimu Nyerere since the 1960s established several colleges and centres for training agricultural extension officers.

On November 18, 1965 Mwalimu Nyerere laid the foundation stone on permanent buildings for Morogoro Agricultural College (now called Sokoine University of Agriculture). Despite all those efforts of the first phase government, our agriculture has remained at almost at a rudimentary stage with the presence of SUA for many decades now.

Kikwete’s administration and Kilimo Kwanza

In 2009, President Kikwete’s government came up with a special initiative that was thought it could revolutionise agriculture for the first time in Tanzania. Kilimo Kwanza (Agriculture First) programme so far has not impacted on social development of Tanzania in any meaningful way.

The programme was well-devised and intelligently documented as a framework of its kind that seemed implementable at every stage until 2015 when its results would be monitored and evaluated. The Kilimo Kwanza programme is pegged on 10 pillars to make it stable and implementable without failing, but as we are going to see in this article, it seems to follow the same suit like other initiatives failed and perhaps it won’t ‘stand again. In summary, Kilimo Kwanza comprises the following 10 actionable pillars:

I. Political will to push our agricultural transformation.

II. Enhanced financing for agriculture.

III. Institutional reorganisation and management of agriculture.

IV. A paradigm shift to strategic agricultural production.

V. Land availability for agriculture.

VI. Incentives to stimulate investments in agriculture.

VII. Industrialization for agricultural transformation.

VIII. Science, technology and human resources to support agricultural transformation.

IX. Infrastructural development to support agricultural transformation.

X. Mobilisation of Tanzanians to support and participate in the implementation of Kilimo Kwanza.

These 10 pillars are well-elaborated in the Kilimo Kwanza green book and if they could be implemented as they are, then agricultural revolution in Tanzania will be no longer a dream. Unfortunately, eight years since this initiative was launched, our agricultural contribution to poverty reduction is still little, thus hunger remains our permanent friend.

Although not much has been realised from Kilimo Kwanza, definitely, there are some areas, which have been implemented. Already we have in place Tanzania Agricultural Development Bank (TADB), the legislation for irrigation (The Irrigation Act, 2013) is operational and has established the National Agriculture and Cooperatives Commission (NACC) and many others.

Irrigation has been a cumbersome challenge

Awkwardly, Kilimo Kwanza has failed to realise the most important aspect, that is increasing the area of irrigation from about 400,000 to seven million hectares projected for 2015. About eight years down the line since Kilimo Kwanza initiative was launched in August 2009, the government has done little to develop more irrigation schemes that will boost food security to even at a higher level. If the government would have met its goal of increasing irrigation infrastructural area from 400 000 hectares to seven million in 2015, for sure Tanzania will a become food sufficient country.

According to the National Irrigation Master Plan, Tanzania has 29.4 million hectares suitable for irrigation. If it 50 million people, that means every adult Tanzania can have at least one hectare for irrigation if all land falls under irrigation will be schemed and made available for people to hire and irrigate their crops.

Since irrigation is the most reliable way of eradicating hunger and poverty, assure the country of food self-sufficiency, why all concerted efforts should not be directed towards irrigation?

If Kilimo Kwanza is likely to fail like other initiatives launched by the past governments, which initiative or programme will succeed then? With political will and proper planning and commitment, it could be possible to develop irrigation infrastructure slowly, at least 100,000 hectares each.

CCM Manifesto and the promise of irrigation development

After the government has failed to develop seven million hectares of irrigation by 2015 as was provided for in Kilimo Kwanza green book, the CCM manifesto now promises us it will develop only one million hectares of irrigation area by 2020. Are we going forward or backward!

We can ask our leaders, how did they arrive at seven million hectares in 2009 and six years later they reduce them to one million hectares. No one can understand this kind of planning and choosing programmes for our development. With such mentality, it is doubtful if even those one million hectares will be schemed by 2020, just four years remain before 2020.

Irrigation is the only solution for food security

Given the largest proportion of the poor living in rural areas, who depend on rainfall based agriculture as their mainstay, irrigation agriculture remains central to poverty reduction in general and food self-sufficiency for the country. According to government reports, 400,000 hectares under irrigation now contribute about 24 per cent of food security in the country. Thus, simple arithmetic shows that seven million hectares earmarked in Kilimo Kwanza to be used for irrigation will boost food security by 420 per cent by 2015.

Had the aspect of seven million hectares being implemented as indicated in Pillar No 2 in the green book, no Tanzanian will be under the hunger threat as we begin the eighth year of Kilimo Kwanza this year 2017. Unfortunately, it wasn’t implemented and we don’t know why. We are very good in planning, but poor in executing our plans. That means we choose our plans wrongly.

The history of development of irrigation schemes in the country has been going as slow as a snail’s pace. By the 1990s irrigation schemed area was about 53,000 hectares, while today, 55 years after independence, with all initiatives taken on agriculture, still we have only 400,000 hectares under irrigation.

Among 44 million hectares suitable for arable land, only 23 per cent of them are used for agriculture that uses a hand hoe technology. With this slow transformation of our agriculture, we should forget green revolution of agriculture under Kilimo Kwanza Initiative in near future.

Without reasonable development of irrigation infrastructure, our agriculture will remain rudimentary that cannot attract young people to it.

Mwalimu Nyerere often reminded us that, unless our agriculture attracts educated young people, we shouldn’t anticipate it to reduce poverty among our people.

Educated young people of today are ready to go into agriculture, but only if such agriculture can guarantee them better life thereafter. Let the government now direct a lot of resources towards the development of irrigation schemes that will be employing substantial number of thousands of graduates from our universities each year.

The author is a lawyer/journalist.