Retired President of Tanzania, Jakaya Kikwete has disclosed that difficulty in accessing, adopting and absorption of modern technology are the key hindrances and challenges affecting the transformation of rural agriculture in Tanzania.
According to him, the challenges coupled with the unavailability of markets adversely affects food security and income generation for most households in Tanzania.
Mr. Kikwete made this known during an interview with the Vice-President of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) in which the retired President serves as a board member.
He said, “Nearly 85 per cent of Tanzanians live in rural areas, and depend on agriculture as their source of livelihood. But their farming is characterized by low productivity, while food security is not assured. They also don’t earn enough, thus affecting their capacity to afford basic needs.”
In furtherance to his speech, he stated that technology adoption will also help to sustain the effectiveness of production capacity in rural farming households as more of the youths are absorbed into the growing manufacturing and services sectors.
“When agriculture is transformed, it would create opportunities for the agro-industry to develop, and as they develop, the services industry that is used in servicing the agro-industry will also grow, and thus, more people would be taken out of the agriculture industry into other sectors of the economy,” he added.
“As people are taken out of agriculture, you must maintain productivity in the rural areas, and that is why we have to encourage and embrace technology adoption,” he further added.
He made a striking revelation that during his first days as President of Tanzania, he was against the state of the agriculture sector at the time.
“I had a huge passion for transforming agriculture, we also came up with the initiative ‘Kilimo Kwanza’ whose literal translation means agriculture first, and through dialogues with the private sector, we also discussed the sector’s role in the economy and what should be done,” he stated.
However, Mr. Kikwete revealed that the close cooperation between AGRA and the Southern Agricultural Growth Corridor of Tanzania (SAGCOT) will solve many of the problems that are contributing to a non-profitable agricultural sector.
In a census conducted by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) on the National Sample Census of Agriculture, 7,837,405 households equivalent to 65.3 per cent of the total 12,007,839 households were into agricultural activities.
“Technology adoption will also help to sustain the effectiveness of production capacity in rural farming”
Comments are closed.