WHY TANZANIA YOUTH SHUN FARMING

Youth Participate in Agriculture using hand hoe

Lack of enough resources and incentives for improving agriculture sector, have made majority of youth to shun away from farming activities, the government official has said.

“We are therefore, looking to invest more on technology, skills and start providing incentives to stimulate the interest of graduates toward agriculture, ” the director of crop development in the Ministry of Food Security and Cooperatives, Mr Geoffrey Kirenga, told The Citizen on the sideline of the Tanzania-India Agribusiness forum held in Dar es Salaam recently.

According to him, the major challenge has been difficult to make farming attractive to the youngsters since most of them were not interested in taking up farming as their economic activity.

Mr Kirenga explained that most youth in the country viewed the sector as a non-remunerative activity and thus migrating to nearby urban centres, where they don’t succeed as well. For many years, the country has depended on hand hoe farming, which puts off youth to engage in the sector by considering it as a tedious job.

However, he noted that Tanzania was set to collaborate with India to make agriculture profitable by investing and make incentives available to interested youths. “They must have access to lending and have specialised training on the kind of crops to grow…..after these have been provided, they should be sure that there is a market for their produce,” he stated.

Over 35 Indian companies and 100 businesses from Tanzania attended the forum. At the forum, businesses both India and Tanzania agreed to joint venture in diverse projects in order to stimulate growth in the sector and reduce poverty in rural areas, hence public and private investment in agriculture should be increased. The forum provided good opportunities for local businesses to do business with their colleagues from India in terms of securing markets and good prices in India. 

Tanzania Investment Centre (TIC) acting executive director, Mr Raymond Mbilinyi said the forum provided a link for local businesses to grow in association with Indian businesses by investing in technology, skills and capital needed in the agriculture sector to enhance the competitiveness of Tanzanian farming and build trade across the region.

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