Tanzania is asking the Obama administration to invest more in food security and agricultural technology in Africa as the surest way to end the continent’s perpetual poverty and food shortages.

The new proposal tabled by Tanzania for a renewed US commitment to agricultural development will help some of the poorest regions in the world feed themselves rather than relying on food aid from the developed world.

In a closed-door meeting with US President Barack Obama, Tanzanian President Jakaya Kikwete, the first African president to meet with the new US leader, recommended radical agricultural reform as the best option to fight poverty on the continent.

President Kikwete met President Obama on invitation at the White House, Washington DC, a week ago. The meeting was also attended the US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

President Kikwete explained to President Obama that increased commitment to food production in Africa would help bring 160 million people out of poverty within a very short framework of time.

Information made available to The EastAfrican confirms that the Tanzanian leader told his host that agriculture development had generally fallen off the agenda of Africa’s development partners, warning that the decline for agricultural support could condem Africa to perpetual poverty.

Informed sources in the Tanzania government said that President Kikwete was delighted to find that President Obama shares his commitment to improving food production.

According to a Foreign Ministry official, President Kikwete said the Obama Administration could support Africa’s Green Revolution by investing in projects that increased the use of irrigation, in multiplication of quality seeds and improvement of marketing systems and infrastructure to enable farmers to reach markets.

The US is home to some of the most technologically advanced farming practices in the world and has the capacity to help African farmers become self-sufficient.

However, according to an official report, the United States Official Development Assistance to agriculture in Africa had declined approximately 85 per cent from the mid-1980s to 2006.

The United States is now spending 20 times as much on food aid in Africa as it is spending to help African farmers grow more of their own food.

President Kikwete met with President Obama and exchanged views on approaches to enhancing the US-Tanzanian partnership, improving development policy in the fields of health, education, and agriculture, and on how the US can work with partners on the continent to solve some of the most pressing African conflicts. 

President Obama and President Kikwete expressed a desire to work together to find common solutions to these conflicts.

The Tanzanian leader became the first African head of state to meet the new US leader at the Oval Office since his inauguration as the US President in January. 

Close bilateral relationship between the United States and Tanzania were among the issue discussed between the two leaders.

President Kikwete has managed to position his country in a pivotal relationship with the US.

He was also the last African president to host former US president George W Bush, who spent four days of his six-day tour of Africa in Tanzania in February last year.
 Tanzania, with a population of 40 million, has for several decades experienced food insufficiency despite having vast tracts of arable land, including fertile river valleys and the central plateau.

Although successive governments since Independence have declared that Tanzania’s economic backbone is agriculture, little has been done to implement viable strategies aimed at food sufficiency, let alone surplus production.

The country depends on food produced by peasants who cultivate small farms with low quality seeds.

Large-scale commercial farming, which existed before the adoption of the 1967 Arusha Declaration — the country’s socialist blueprint — produced enough food for the nation.

From the 1970s, food shortages became a persistent problem as drought and declining world market prices took their toll.

The government has declared its determination to turn agriculture around by directing all districts to allocate money in their 2009/10 annual budgets to purchase 40 small tractors each, in order to spur mechanised farming.

The country is also looking for investors in commercial farming projects but needs to first amend its land ownership laws to accommodate them.

Tanzania’s national annual food requirements are estimated at 8.4 million metric tonnes, while food crop production is around 7.7 million tonnes a year.

US Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Johnnie Carson recently said the new administration would adhere to the same policies that were pursued during the George Bush era..

He said President Obama’s administration would maintain or enhance existing humanitarian and economic initiatives to the region including the Millennium Challenge programme, the President’s Emergency Plan for Aids Relief (Pepfar) and Agoa, which he said will be expanded to agricultural exports in conjunction with intensified support for a biotechnology-fuelled Green Revolution.