FINANCE Minister Dr Mwigulu Nchemba has underscored the necessity to engage more youth in agriculture for the country to raise revenue base and create more jobs.
“If you want to increase revenue and create more jobs the youth engagement in agriculture is unavoidable,” Dr Nchemba stated on Tuesday at the 2023 AGRF sideline event which involved Minister for Agriculture and Minister for Livestock and Fisheries from mainland as well Zanzibar’s Minister for Agriculture, Irrigation, Natural Resources and Minister for the blue economy.
Dr Nchemba stated that agriculture has enormous job opportunities for the youth, instead of waiting for the collar jobs.
Speaking about what the government was doing to lure more young people to the agriculture, Dr Nchemba, noted that efforts have been made to rebuild the mentality among the youth that there is business in the agriculture value chain.
“This helps to reduce that negative mentality to the agriculture. We have also increased the agriculture budget by four times reaching over 970bn/- currently,” he told the gathering which involved local and foreign investors in the sector.
Earlier, Agriculture Minister for mainland, Mr Hussein Bashe pointed on the current phenomena of how the global crisis has affected global economies, saying it is high time that African countries partner and highlight opportunities available in the globe.
“In Tanzania, we are ready in terms of policies for the agricultural transformation. Tanzania has about 44 million hectares of arable land for agriculture, but only between 12 and 15 per cent is utilised,” Mr Bashe stated.
He said the production was still low and almost 70 per cent of farmers are smallholder farmers.
Based on the statistics, the country is doing a lot of transformation, including increasing the agriculture budget, he said.
Also, the government is putting up an enabling infrastructure for producing quality seeds.
“The government will continue to invest in seed research and allow the private players to do seeds multiplication, and the government will check how they distribute to small holder farmers at subsidized prices,” Mr Bashe said.
On the other hand, he encouraged investors to come to Tanzania to invest in the sector in order to support small farmers to increase productivity in the agriculture and make the African continent independent in food production.
He said through the 2023 AGRF, the ministry will show the country’s available opportunities in agriculture sector to the world.
On his part, Livestock and Fisheries Minister Abdallah Ulega, said in order to improve and enhance application of technologies and further improve infrastructure in agriculture, livestock and fisheries value chain, more capital was required to be injected by financial institution, while it was also crucial to attract more investments.