Business and Technology Reporter in Nairobi, Kenya
Nation Media Group
The African Development Bank has approved a loan of $129.71 million for Tanzania to fund one of President Samia Suluhu’s flagship projects meant to boost participation of the youth in agriculture.
The loan will cover up to 53.8 per cent of the total cost, fielding the expenses for the first phase of the project dubbed “Building a Better Tomorrow: Youth Initiatives for Agribusiness” (BBT-YIA).
As part of the package, the funding also comes with two grants — $1.15 million from the Korea-Africa Economic Cooperation (Koafec) and $210,000 from Thailand-based tropical vegetable seed firm East-West Seed.
Tanzanian government will contribute $110.41 million, covering 45.8 per cent of the needed $241.3 million for the project championed by President Suluhu and her Agriculture minister Hussein Bashe.
“This project is expected to incubate and empower approximately 11,000 ‘agripreneurs,’ including at least 6,000 young agribusiness owners,” said AfDB’s country manager for Tanzania, Patricia Laverley.
“The program will facilitate access to finance for an additional 2,500 young people already involved in agribusiness but lacking access to commercial loans. We expect each agribusiness run by a young person will employ an average of five workers.”
This project was launched by President Suluhu in March last year in the run-up to the Africa Food Systems Forum hosted by Tanzania in Dar es Salaam last September. It was meant as an initiative to encourage young Tanzanians to consider careers in the agriculture sector.
In the long-term, it aims to produce at least 12,000 profitable youth-led agricultural enterprises over the next 12 years, beginning by training over 200,000 youth and involving 20,000 others in internship program and mentoring 15,000 youth-led agribusinesses through incubation programmes.
President Suluhu told the Feed Africa Summit in Dakar last year that this project is part of Dar’s Agenda 2030 policy, “which will see that by 2030 the agriculture sector in Tanzania contributes 10 percent to the GDP.”
“Who will help us achieve that? The youth. So, we have initiated a programme called Build a Better Tomorrow for youth and women,” Suluhu said at the January 2023 conference.
She said the project would involve giving about 680,000 hectares of land to a group of women and youth, each getting ten hectares, as part of the government’s strategy to entice the youth into careers in agriculture.
