Stakeholders scan progress on Africa’s food systems agenda

Photo: File

Food grains

By Ashton Balaigwa , The Guardian

SUFFICIENT and surplus food is available in Tanzania, which highlights achievement of goal number two of the Sustainable Development Goals (SGDs), a senior government official has declared.

Gungu Mibavu, the marketing and food security director at the Ministry of Agriculture, said this here over the weekend at a stakeholders’ meeting to discuss pathways to build sustainable food systems, a three-day meeting organised by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).

The meeting, supported by the UN food systems coordination office, set out to review stakeholders’ proposals issued during the Africa food systems summit mid last year, as SDG goal number 2 aims at ending hunger and all forms of malnutrition by 2030. 

In so doing it commits to universal access to safe, nutritious and sufficient food, while the director noted that the government has made the food security agenda a major priority to ensure the country “feeds itself but also produces surplus for others.”

“This includes ensuring that the country’s borders are open to facilitate export of surplus food, which is part of the implementation of SDG goal number two to eradicate hunger by 2030,” he said.

Researchers and other experts who attended the summit need to ensure that the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) which were supplanted in 2015 by the 17 SDGs meant for realisation by 2030 are reached, he said, citing goal number one which focuses on ending poverty.

The government has signed various protocols including the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) protocol on food trade as part of implementation of the government’s vision of feeding the country and making the surplus available to others, he stated urging the public to increase grain production to maintaining food self-sufficiency.

Sihaba Haji Vuai, the head of policy drafting at the Zanzibar Ministry of Agriculture, Irrigation, Natural Resources and Livestock, said the government has invested in strategies for transforming the agriculture sector.

There are six priority crops as well as fruits, spices, livestock and fishing, where the ministry was working on strengthening agro-sector infrastructure, especially irrigation schemes to increase rice and vegetable production.

“What we are doing is to ensure that we promote local processing and packaging of various crops and livestock products to enhance value addition and raise incomes,” he added.