Food security: A green leaf from Tanzania

“We realised that not investing in agriculture is much more costly than investing in the sector”
-Samia Suluhu Hassan
( President of Tanzania)

The piece of heart-warming news which was made public at the World Food Prize, at the Norman Borlaug International Dialogue held in Iowa, United States on October 31 seems incredible, but it is as true as the sun ruling over the day. Put simply, Tanzania has achieved an incredible 128percent feat on food security and even exporting to some neighbouring African countries. This is considered a new milestone in the country’s history as it has become a food processor and in fact a net exporter of cashew nuts.

Furthermore, its revolution in rural electrification is remarkable with nearly 100percent of its 12,300 villages now connected to the national grid. Such is the impact that this change in narrative has led to massive youth employment. Specifically, the support from the African Development Bank (AfDB) has a programme in place providing 10 acres of land and support the training of 11,000 youths.

Worthy of note is that as at 2022, Tanzania did not rank among the top five African countries with regards to the food security ranking. Back then, South Africa ranked first with 61.7, Morocco had 53, Kenya 52.6, and Ghana with 51.9. But now it has achieved an outstanding mark of 128 percent. What could be responsible for this? The answer is not far-fetched.

According to Dr. Akinwumi Adesina, president of the African Development Bank, “President Suluhu Hassan’s leadership and determination, strong political will are key to Tanzania’s success in food security.” Other African countries, including Nigeria should borrow a fresh leaf from this.

Indeed, all these and more achievements should be lessons to Nigeria, currently battling with the frustrating collapse of the national grid 24 times in year 2024. And according to the 2024 Nigeria Residential Energy Demand-Side Survey (NREDSS) as conducted by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) only 58percent of Nigerian Households in only nine out of the 36 states and the FCT are connected to the national grid. The research has shown that 67 percent of the households across the country still use firewood for cooking virtually on daily basis.

It is also disheartening to note that in October 2023 Nigeria was placed second out of the top five African countries experiencing food insecurity. The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) ranked first with 25.8 million people suffering from both food and nutrition insecurity. Sudan came third with 28.3 million food-insecure people while Ethiopia was ranked 4th with 19.99 million hungry people. That also meant that from the 2023 Mid-Year Report by the World Bank as revealed specifically in October of that year 238 million people in 48 countries faced acute food and nutrition insecurity. That was about 22 million more people than was recorded in 2022.

These frightening figures should serve as a wake-up call to our political leaders for a country which agriculture contributed about 70 percent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as at independence in 1960. That brings up the critical questions about what right steps to take towards achieving food security here in Nigeria that God has abundantly blessed with vast arable land, of 36.9 million hectres, from the tropical rainforest in the south to the savannah up north? Added to these are water resources made available from rivers, their tributaries, and of course, the Atlantic ocean. Also, about 70percebt of the population are youths. What more, there is all-year-round sunshine and the seasonal rains. Our leaders, who, over the successive administrations, have come up with Operation Feed the Nation, Directorate of Food, Roads and Rural Infrastructure and several others, should listen to the voice of reason by the Tanzanian president.

Said she on the sweet ingredients that continue to put quality food on the table of the average Tanzanian citizen: ” We are now working on quality, accessibility and affordability, and how to minimize post-harvest losses.” So, should Nigerians apply these unfailing principles that boost both food and nutrition security. But much more should be done on guaranteeing security of the farmers and other investors in agribusiness. It is worrisome that since 2009 hundreds of thousands of farmers have either been unable to access their farmlands or got killed in Benue, Plateau, Adamawa, down to Ondo and Oyo states.

The next lesson to learn from Tanzania is that of post-harvest food processing. Many of our youths need to get trained in the areas of not only growing disease-resistant, high-yielding hybrid seedlings but how to add value to them by applying modern technology for the processing of the raw materials. Preservation is also required. Surely, institutes such as IITA and FIIRO, Oshodi in Lagos would be of benefit to such youths who are interested in training. But focus should be on the core competence of each of the six geo-political zones. That is why the call for a holistic restructuring for the states to take over the handling of their agricultural resources has become a necessity.

The lessons from Tanzania’s revolution in food and nutrition security are not rocket science. Rather, with great vision, the capacity to identify the areas of abundance of raw materials and providing the enabling environment for the food value chain to be strengthened; with the right professionals acting as catalysts it would be achieved in our dear country, Nigeria.

For, food security is a situation that exists when all people, at all times, have physical, social, and economic access to sufficient safe, nutritious food items that meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life. That is according to Wikipedia.

Now is therefore, the right time for actions to be taken by the policy makers strictly based on available credible data. Going forward, the federal and state governments should increase budgetary allocation on researches related to agriculture as it is done in the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, India, Brazil and Cuba. Also significant is Public Private Partnership (PPP) as the driving force to propel Nigeria to the promised land of both food and nutrition security, as Tanzania has brilliantly done.