Tanzania has opened grain storage facilities in Lubumbashi, DR Congo, and Juba in South Sudan to facilitate the sale of surplus food crops.

Agriculture Minister Hussein Bashe on social media last week said that the country also plans to open another facility in Kenya’s coastal city of Mombasa.

The Agriculture ministry will not directly involve itself with the business of selling the exported grain but it will assume the role of an initiator, he added.

“We have opened grain centres in Juba, South Sudan, and Lubumbashi in the DRC and already delivered 800 tonnes of grains to the two centres. This is all in efforts to enable Tanzanian farmers and traders get good markets for their products,” Bashe tweeted.

“We believe access to markets motivates farmers to increase production.”

The country recently launched an ambitious food surplus creation scheme titled the Southern Agricultural Growth Corridor of Tanzania (SAGCOT), which uses 350,000 hectares in the country’s fertile southern highlands region to grow maize, paddy, wheat, sorghum, millet, cassava, beans, sweet potatoes and bananas.

Statistics show that the country exported 97,000 tonnes of maize in 2019 alone.