MAKE HORTICULTURE BLUEPRINT WORK WONDERS
Press reports that the Tanzania Horticultural Association (Taha Group) has formulated a strategy that is designed to boost annual horticultural export earnings from the current $779 million to $1 billion by 2026 are most exciting indeed.
A 45-page Horticultural Blueprint for the strategy drawn up by Taha Group itself was formally launched at a Horticultural Business Forum that was part of Taha’s 15th Annual General Meeting held in Arusha City at the weekend. In the event, the Minister for Agriculture, Mr Hussein Bashe – while agreeing with the Blueprint’s proposals in principle – nonetheless counselled Taha and ministry officials to work with private sector operators in ensuring that the blueprint is functional on the ground so as to attain its intended results.
Among the goals of the strategy are the creation of employment opportunities and windfalls in foreign exchange earnings from horticultural exports of superlative quality and quantities. The general idea is to boost horticultural exports from 850 tonnes in 2021 to around 2,000 tonnes in 2026. Another pivotal goal is to secure sustainable and classy export markets amid stiff competition – including, for example, China’s 1.4.4 billion consumer market for avocado imports, currently valued at $133 million a year. Indeed, Taha has not been lackadaisical in this. The nation’s horticultural game changer has been working in close collaboration with assorted major development partners on its strategy. These have included the US Department of Agriculture (USDA); the US Agency for International Aid (USAID); Plan International; Trade-Mark East Africa (TMEA); Andreas Hermes Akademie (AHA of Germany) – among others from Belgium and Finland.
Horticulture does have a huge potential to lift Tanzanians out of abject poverty in a matter of a few years – and we can only wish Taha and its partners-in-development Godspeed in making the Horticultural Blueprint work the wonders that it has the potential for.
HEED CALLS ON TRADE BARRIERS
While trade between Tanzania and Kenya is apparently continuing to flourish, this is not the case regarding trade between Tanzania and Uganda.
For example, Tanzanians exports to Kenya in 2020 were valued at $230.23 million, as against $258.18 million in imports from Kenya. [UN COMTRADE database on international trade].
On the other hand, statistics compiled by the Geneva, Switzerland-based International Trade Centre (ITC) show that Tanzanian exports to Uganda in the same year (2020) were valued at $743.6 million, while imports from Uganda that year were valued at a paltry $95.1 million. Apparently, one major reason for this huge disparity in Uganda/Tanzania inter-trade are tariff and non-tariff barriers imposed by Tanzania on imports of maize and rice from Uganda. In the event, lorries transporting Tanzania exports to Uganda return to the country empty of imports from Uganda.
This is most unsatisfactory… Especially considering that Tanzania and Uganda – and, indeed, Kenya as well – are together veteran members of the East African Community (EAC) regional integration bloc. We sincerely urge the two governments – and, indeed, all the EAC governments – to regularly sit at the same (round) table and thrash out differences that could/would derail EAC’s noble objectives of widening and deepening co-operation among the partner states in every direction
