African countries Boost Agriculture Hubs To Drive Industrialisation
March, 12th 2020
There can now but be no doubt that the government is intent on seeking to achieve the goals of the National Development Vision 2025. These include – but are not limited to – entrenching a semi-industrialised, sustainable middle-income economy by 2025.
It is generally acknowledged that agriculture is the fuel that would functionally drive industrialisation of African countries on a meaningful and sustainable basis.
Indeed, most African countries have stagnated in their all-inclusive socioeconomic development largely because of poor policies and regulatory frameworks which focus on peripheral issues, and for all practical purposes ignore agriculture, considered the undeveloped backbone of many economies.
All this must drastically change if Tanzania is to accomplish the transformation required to enable the government to realise the envisaged Vision 2025 in the few remaining years.
Assorted experts are agreed that Tanzania has huge potential to become an agricultural hub in Africa. But, to do so, it must first revisit and overhaul as and where/when necessary the extant policies and regulatory frameworks on agricultural practices and related developmental activities.
In any case, the government and its related institutions, as well as privates sector players, must be more than able, willing and ready to invest in empowering smallholder farmers every which way as a matter of course.
Generally, agricultural hubs help to boost farming through organized crops production, handling, processing and marketing, as well as readily accessing financing, technology and inputs like quality seeds, fertilisers and pesticides.
Agricultural hubs are today the best way to grow the sector in Africa – and also bolster its potential for global food security.
All this came out in the two-day Tanzania Agribusiness Forum 2020 in Dar es Salaam last week which stressed focus on raising the country’s agribusiness profile through the right policies and regulatory frameworks, including those on an investment-and-business-friendly environment.
Doing this would entrench the drive for functional industrialisation.
Source: thecitizen.co.tz