Samia revives hopes of making agriculture true economic pillar

Dar es Salaam. Agriculture has always been said to be the economic mainstay, but with little attention given to it, the sector has largely remained rain-fed.

However, stakeholders now see the sixth phase regime, under President Samia Suluhu Hassan, through rose-coloured glasses, thanks to her political will to take the sector to new heights.

Analysts are of the view that earlier attempts at improving agricultural productivity through such slogans as Kilimo cha Kufa na Kupona, Kilimo Kwanza and other daring interventions lacked the political will that could attract both public and private sector investments to spur the sector’s growth.

However, with a significant budget for the agriculture sector, a fertilizer subsidy, a good plan to utilize irrigation schemes for available arable land, and opening export markets, the agriculture sector will have a reason to fly high.

The Sh954 billion budget set aside for the agriculture sector during the 2022/23 financial year, compared to the preceding year’s Sh294 billion, shows how serious President Hassan’s administration is in its effort to transform the sector.

This suggests that this year’s budget has recognised that in Tanzania, agriculture is pivotal to economic development and more of the efforts to revive the economy and significantly reduce the level of poverty.

This year’s budget prompts a reflection on the enormous efforts by the government to reposition agriculture to its place of providing food for human consumption and raw materials for industrial needs, as well as generating foreign exchange earnings and employment for the especially young population.

But this will only be possible if it is devoted to revamping the agricultural sector by ensuring it has all the resources it needs.

A lecturer at Sokoine University of Agriculture (Sua), Charles Malaki, said the past two years of President Hassan being in power have been promising.

He poured praise on President Hassan for putting in place good policies for opening the export market, a fertilizer subsidy, a good plan to utilize irrigation schemes for available arable lands, and subsidised fuel prices to reduce the costs of production.

In an effort to boost agriculture, late last month, the government revived the Tanzania Fertiliser Company (TFC) in a bid to ensure sufficient supply of fertilisers at a lower price than the market price.

Being eight years after the company stopped involving itself in selling fertilisers due to commercial and capital reasons, TFC is back in the game and the government in January launched the distribution of the product at a subsidised price.

Agriculture minister Hussein Bashe is on record as saying until earlier last month, the government had supplied 247,000 tonnes of fertilizer to the food basket regions, which include Mbeya, Songwe, Iringa, Njombe, Morogoro, Rukwa, Ruvuma and Katavi.

With the subsidy, fertilizers prices went down by half, from the previous Sh140,000 to the current Sh70,000.

Mr Malaki commended the government’s commitment to improving the agriculture sector, which will help reduce poverty among smallholder farmers.

“It is of our expectation that the agriculture sector will improve people’s incomes,” said Mr Malaki.

“We need to commit more funds to dedicate 10 percent of our annual budget to agriculture to make it easier for farmers to find a market for their produce and venture into value addition.”

The agriculture sector has been playing an important role as a key driver for economic growth in Tanzania since independence, employing over 65 percent of the population.

Agriculture expert Elias Mwachula said the two years of President Hassan in power were successful in different dimensions.

The success, he explained, includes the removal of crop export burn and agricultural production support for youth and women through soft loans facilitated by local government authorities. “In the two years, Tanzania saw an improvement in rural infrastructure that enabled farmers to get access to markets for their produce,” observed Mr Mwachula.

Echoing the previous contribution made here, the true government’s intention to see the agriculture sector grow by 10 percent by 2030 reaffirms its intention to truly view and take the agriculture sector seriously as compared to the previous year’s budget. This is according to an economist who is a senior lecturer at the Open University of Tanzania, Dr Hildebrand Shayo.

“Huge investment and export broadening potentials for generating higher growth in the economy as a result have, in my view, remained unlocked and unexploited in agriculture,” Dr Shayo was in the recent past quoted by the government newspaper, Daily News.

Irrefutably, agricultural development is considered to hold the key to economic development for most sub-Saharan countries, including Tanzania.

Above all, he suggested, the country must maintain equilibrium between the raw material requirements of industries, human consumption needs and the capacity of agriculture to supply the raw materials.

It is known that agricultural commercialisation and investment are the key strategies for promoting accelerated modernisation, sustainable growth and development and, hence, poverty reduction in the sector.

But to attract serious investment into agriculture, it is imperative that those constraints inhibiting the performance of the sector are first identified to unlock them and create a conducive investment climate in the sector and as of now, that will attract young people, according to Dr Shayo.

The lack of adequate storage and processing facilities and technical constraints in Tanzania are known to affect both the upstream and downstream segments of agriculture.

Meanwhile, it is well known that poor government support and an inadequate strategy prevent the emergence of innovations from research institutes, thereby curtailing the level of available, technically feasible, and efficient agricultural practices.

Even when they are available, there seem to be communication gaps between farmers’ end-users of research efforts and the researchers.

“There is a need for serious rethinking on incentives to attract investments, crop and livestock production, fish production, input supply, and the processing of farm produce for domestic and export markets,” recommended Dr Shayo. The World Bank (WB) recently placed Tanzania among three African nations whose agriculture needs transformation to become the continent’s agriculture powerhouse, with economists saying the sector’s local policy needs to reflect global views.

In its recent journal dubbed “Putting Africans at the Heart of Food Security and Climate Resilience,” the WB said at least one in five Africans goes to bed hungry, with 140 million individuals facing acute food insecurity.

Moreover, the journal sees that Tanzania, Angola, and Zambia have the potential to be agricultural powerhouses in Africa, though the sector should be transformed to meet the needs of people, economy, and environment.

Prof Haji Semboja, senior lecturer at the State University of Zanzibar, said: “The aforesaid countries are among Africa’s richly resourced countries; they have massive productive land fit for agriculture, and they have manpower.”

He added: “In addition, Tanzania has ample water resources and is strategically located, but with the agricultural structure in terms of laws, regulations and policies, Tanzania may not realise its potential. The economics professor was of the view that a total transformation should start with agriculture policy.

“You need to have a system that responds to current and future needs and more importantly, policies that emphasise the importance of value addition,” he asserted.