Part of the explanation here includes over-reliance on rains, cane varieties and farming methods calling for improvement, and challenges relating to harvest logistics. With this, the recommended recipe to ensure bigger yields, higher productivity and better prices is obvious.
While the endemic shortfall makes importation inevitable, critics see the intervention as counterproductive in that it often involves shady transactions that make both local producers and the government end up with a raw deal, chiefly in terms of income or revenue loss.
But some industry watchers have been pointing fingers at the government, accusing them of dillydallying on the facilitation of large-scale foreign investment in the sugar industry – particularly as concerns the need to expand estates and extend further support to out growers.
However, if this has indeed stood as a stumbling block, the government has had a change of heart. This is going by the Bank of Tanzania Governor, Professor Benno Ndulu, who has just pledged enhanced government assistance to the country’s sugar industry.
In recent remarks while on a visit to Kagera Region, the professor underlined the need for the country’s sugar and other industries to implement programmes aimed at stepping up the capacity and efficiency of their workers.
He also hinted at the government’s readiness to do whatever it had resources for to ensure enhanced contribution by all sectors to the national economy.
This is as it should be, and it is of special relevance with respect to agriculture, a sector aptly described as the backbone of our country’s social and economic development even if it doesn’t always attract and enjoy as much attention as it deserves.
As the Magufuli government fights to make its industrialisation dream come true by the set deadline, we should see a fast-receding frequency flimsy pretexts making Tanzania fail to appeal to serious and well meaning investors.
Stumbling blocks once commonly cited by prospective investors include input prices seen as exorbitant as well as lack of urgency in the investment process generally, but particularly as relates to acquisition of land, taxation and licensing.
Much of this is now history, fortunately, with vast improvements having been registered at the Tanzania Investment Centre and various other agencies expected and supposed to make investing in Tanzania smooth sailing.
We still need to walk our talk a lot more, though. For instance, have we not devised and “implemented” irrigation projects for far too long in our country relative to the progress actually registered?
Is agriculture in the Tanzania of today really all that more developed and lucrative sector than it was, say, three decades ago? Is the impact of climate change really the factor most to blame for the mess?
Is there much to make us really proud about the fact that our country is a leader in Africa in terms of the population of our livestock, especially cattle?
We could ask ourselves questions without number, but the bottom line would remain that we need to move faster but more scientifically if we are to get where we are determin
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