The Tanzania Horticultural Development Strategy 2012-2021

The Tanzania Horticultural Development Strategy 2012-2021

By Komba Brigida baprm 47531

The horticultural industry envisages developing a robust competitive horticultural sector capable of making the country self-sufficient in nutrition and sustainable supply of high quality horticultural produce for domestic, regional and international markets. The Tanzania Horticultural Development Strategy 2012-2021 is a demand-driven initiative of the horticulture stakeholders to exploit the fast growing demand and market opportunities available in the national, regional and international markets. This sub sector has been identified as one of the priority sectors in the National Export Strategy (2008), Kilimo Kwanza Resolution and key in diversification of the agricultural sector from overdependence on traditional primary products. It has a potential to become one of the main sources of foreign exchange earnings for Tanzania. The strategy envisages facilitating the development of horticultural industry so as to improve nutritional status, increase incomes and reduce poverty while increasing productivity and quality of the produce. Horticulture is an important sub-sector that can exploit the potential of the country particularly the underutilised arable land of 44.0 million ha and the irrigatable land of 29.0m ha that horticulture tapes. Currently the irrigated acreage is 290,000 ha which is very negligible size compared to the potential. The Tanzanian horticultural industry faces several universal challenges, namely, weak production base, low productivity and quality, invisibility and marginalisation, and limited access to finance especially lack of long-term financing and investment. It also faces bottlenecks in land, policy and infrastructure, inadequate market development support, weak industry linkages, limited entrepreneurship capability and inadequate skilled and competent human resources. For the Industry to attain its potential, it needs to overcome the following five key constraints: • Un-coordinated activities, • Inadequate information for development of the sub-sector, • Inefficient investment environment, • Insufficient awareness among Tanzanians about the economic and social potential for horticulture and • Limited access to micro credit for financing small scale farmers. However, responding to these challenges will require a greater degree of partnership between public and private actors. This strategy therefore, addresses key challenges facing the horticultural industry and proposes interventions to guide the development of the industry in Tanzania. These challenges are consistent with the national development priorities and goals, which are spelt out in the Tanzania National Development Vision 2025 as well as the poverty reduction frameworks namely; the National Strategy for Growth and Reduction of Poverty (NSGRP or MKUKUTA) and the Zanzibar Poverty Reduction Plan (ZPRP or MKUZA). The primary goal of Vision 2025 is to improve the quality of life of the people of Tanzania through a strong, diversified, resilient and competitive economy with the capacity to adapt to changing markets and technological conditions.