Rostam Aziz urges more AfDB funding for agriculture

Washington. Prominent Tanzanian businessman Rostam Aziz has urged the African Development Bank (AfDB) to shore up adequate financing to transform Tanzania’s $12.7 billion agriculture sector.

The tycoon’s appeal was meant to help the country to become a major food exporter, and assist the world in meeting its food requirements.

While Tanzania’s biggest challenge remains transformation of the country’s agriculture sector from subsistence to commercial farming, the Agriculture ministry has outlined plans to invest up to Sh1.2 trillion annually to expand irrigation farming.

Tanzania’s target is to expand irrigation farming by over 50 per cent over the next ten years, with the government saying it is a key pillar in the country’s agricultural transformation agenda.

Mr Aziz told AfDB president Akinwumi Adesina during their meeting in Washington that Tanzania had considerable potential for production of both food and cash crops for domestic consumption and export.

Mr Aziz, who is part of President Samia Suluhu Hassan’s delegation to the US, said, however, that Tanzania’s agriculture required significant investment to support crop production and revamp the sector’s value chain.

“It is high time we stopped singing about Tanzania’s potential, and invest to transform the country’s agricultural value chain.”

Reacting to the development, Agriculture minister Hussein Bashe said he had a fruitful meeting with Dr Adesina in Dar es Salaam last month.

“We discussed priority areas of cooperation such as extending credit facilities to farmers, strengthening irrigation, reducing post-harvest losses, and scaling up conservation of traditional seed crops,” he said.

Other priority areas include the government’s ambitious plan to allocate Sh1.5 trillion annually for the next ten years to expand irrigation agriculture.

Despite the country registering an average of 25 percent food surplus, Mr Bashe said post-harvest losses stood at 30 per cent due to a lack of conducive and satisfactory crop preservation infrastructures.

“The government has reviewed its investment in storage facilities, and has shifted from investing in regional multibillion-shilling storage facilities to building rural storage facilities in order to bring the facilities closer to farmers,” said Mr Bashe, who is also the Nzega Urban MP.

He said traditional seed varieties could disappear due to technological advancement, noting that the government was seeking to cooperate with AfDB in the multiplication of traditional seeds and adequate commercialision.

Mr Aziz signed several investment agreements, including a $1 billion deal between Taifa Group and an American investment company, Northern Feed & Company, to produce wheat and soya.