East African Business Week

DAR ES SALAAM, TANZANIA - Tanzania needs an estimated US$289 million every year to increase rice and aquaculture production.
That was stated at the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) national training workshop on rice and aquaculture development in in Dar es Salaam last week by the deputy Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Agriculture Food Security and Cooperatives, Engineer Mbogo Futakamba.
He said in order for Tanzania to improve its rice production it needs the $289 million annually to develop about 500,000 hectares into farm land.
The official said the major problem facing country has been lack of capital to implement sound irrigation systems which lead to reliance on rain-fed farming, which in these times of global warning, dries up crops.
However, Mr Futakamba said with some improvements in the rice farming, harvests have increased from 1.8 tonnes per hectare to 4 tonnes - an increase of 65 % from 875,120 tons in 2007/08 to 1.44 million tons in 2010/2011.
With a population of about 45 million in Tanzania, and an annual population growth of 2.8 %, at the per capita demand of milled rice of 25kg, it is forecasted production will be 150,000 tons of milled rice per annum. He informed the conference that the 'Coalition for African Rice Development' (CARD), which is coordinating the implementation of national rice development strategy (NRDS), expects  rice production to double by 2018.
The CARD brings together Kenya, Uganda, Cameroon, Guinea Madagascar, Mozambique, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Benin, Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast and Ghana.
Speaking on aquaculture industry in Tanzania, the deputy Minister acknowledged that it wasn't well developed despite the  availability of water resources such as large perennial rivers, large lakes, the Indian Ocean, natural and manmade dams and other reservoirs in the country.
The FAO representative to Tanzania, Philipe Poinsot, stressed the importance of rice and aquaculture in the lives of the African populations. Mr Poinsot said FAO has been supporting the promotion of rice and aquaculture productivity in Sub-Saharan Africa countries since 2008, through regional and national workshops. According to FAO, the global rice cultivated area was forecasted to rise by 1.5 % from 156.3 million to 158.6 million hectares, and yields by 2.4 % from 4.2 tons to 4.3 tons of paddy per hectare.
The Dar es Salaam FAO national training workshop on rice and aquaculture development brought participants from several African countries and the Philippines, Indonesia, and Thailand.