EDITORIAL: PROMOTE CROP EXPORTS USING ‘WORLD DAY’ TRICK

Tanzania is the world’s eighth-largest cashew nuts producer – and Africa’s fourth-largest. Cashews are the country’s most exported cash crop, earning $353.1 million in 2019 – beating tobacco, coffee, tea, cloves, cotton and sisal exports hands down.

Cash crop exports accounted for $830 million (nine percent) of all export earnings for Tanzania in 2019, up from $793 million in 2015.

Indeed, Tanzania’s crop exports’ growth potential is huge in terms of arable land and investment opportunities. However, a lacking catalyst is enough promotion. One way of doing this is to proclaim a ‘World Export Cash Crops Day’ – virtually taking a leaf out of Argentina’s book on this, vide that country’s ‘Malbec World Day.’

In 2011, Argentina – the world’s fifth-largest wines producer – proclaimed today’s date, April 17, ‘Malbec World Day’ to commemorate and promote worldwide its wine exports.

The Argentine Head of Marketing Communications at the time, Ms Lis Clément, pontificated that this would “position Argentina as one of the world’s main oenological centres.”

Then – acting through ‘Wines of Argentina’ – she declared April 17 Malbec World Day, “convinced that this would help position Malbec as one of Argentina’s wine gems…”

Largely as a result of that proclamation, today, more than 60 major cities worldwide host Malbec-related events come April 17. ‘Malbec’ is a red wine made from grapes of the Malbec vine, a native of France. An Argentine activist-cum-statesman, Domingo Sarmiento, tasked French soils expert Michel Pouget on April 17, 1853 to export vines to Argentina, where the Malbec variety flourished.

As Argentine’s seventh President (1868–1874), Sarmiento made it his mission to transform Argentina’s wine industry – aided by Malbec World Day, April 17. No wonder Argentina earned $793 million from 2.7 million hectolitres of wine exports alone in 2019.

By exploiting a ‘World Cash Export Crops Day,’ Tanzania could also boost its forex earnings a la Argentina. C’mon… Let’s GET IT DONE!

SPEED UP SIMBA REFORMS

The Simba Sports Club (Simba) is still struggling to secure endorsement of its new leadership structure by the Fair Competition Commission (FCC).

This is taking long mainly because of procedural problems relating to FCC rules and regulations governing the process.

A few months ago, FCC launched investigations into the club’s new leadership structure, interrogating four institutions involved in the process – Simba Sports Club; Simba Sports Club Company; Simba Sports Club Holding Company; MO Simba Company – and one official: Mohammed ‘Mo’ Dewji

After the preliminary investigations, FCC turned to the club’s management seeking to establish whether or not the requisite procedures regarding its new management structure had been followed.

To that end, the management was required to submit its response(s) to FCC by yesterday, April 16.

However, the Simba leadership expressed disappointment at how FCC is handling the matter – saying the delay in endorsing its structural management transformation cannot be a good thing.

We urge Simba to play it cool and let the relevant authorities, including FCC, conduct their mandated tasks – and also urge the authorities to avoid dilly-dallying...

We wish them all Godspeed in coming up with functional solution/solutions to any and all the challenges that arise in their day-to-day activities – and, specifically, including structural transformation of Simba’s leadership.