Unido outlines means to make Tanzania come up with more sunflower

By Correspondent

United Nations Industrial Development Organisation (Unido)

Tanzania could produce over one percent of world’s sunflower oil if more efforts were directed to improve the crop using modern technology, the United Nations Industrial Development Organisation (Unido) has said.



This was said here yesterday by the Unido agent, Dr Vedastus Timothy when explaining the strategies to improve the sunflower industry.

“Tanzania is one of the African countries that produce huge sum of sunflower, unfortunately its standards are not well known at international level due to use of low technology,” he said.

He said in order to improve the sector, Unido has established strategies aimed at using modern processing machine in order to obtain clean sunflower oil
He said under the strategies, farmers would be trained how to improve sunflower farming so that they apply sustainable modern agriculture.

Dr Timothy said lack of modern processing equipment was a major challenge hindering development of the sunflower industry.

He said, despite massive production in Singida, Manyara and Dodoma regions, sunflower processing is still of low quality. He added that this has resulted in the crop failing to penetrate foreign markets.

He added that it was sad that although sunflower oil production is done locally, Tanzania continues to import 60 percent of the product.

However, in a move to ensure sunflower farmers benefit more from the crop, different initiatives have to be taken by various stakeholders.

According to an official of Central Corridor Sunflower Processors Association (Cezosopa), Ringo Iringo, more than 27,000 sunflower farmers in the three regions have entered farming contracts with seven oil processors that would see improvement in the quality of their produce and livelihood.

He said last year seven oil firms were involved in the contract that connects around 28,000 farmers in Singida, Dodoma and Manyara regions.

Meanwhile, the government said it is ready to cooperate with the market players so as to enable citizens to take part in various markets.

It urged them to ensure that there are sufficient and quality agricultural goods, market information, availability of packaging materials and the producers are linked with financial institutions to enable them access loans. 

SOURCE: THE GUARDIAN