Posted on September, 11, 2023 at 09:35 am
TANZANIA’S Building Better Tomorrow Youth Initiative for Agribusiness (BBT-YIA) has attracted a mammoth 500 million US dollars (about 1.25tri/-) funding from development partners, to finance its projects in the next six years.
Agriculture Minister Hussein Bashe mentioned the development partners and their funding commitment in bracket as the African Development Bank (100 million US dollars), World Bank (300 million US dollars additional funding), the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) and its partners (40 million US dollars) and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (60 million US dollars).
Minister Bashe also mentioned the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) as among other partners who declared funding commitment.
The development partners expressed their funding commitment at the Youth Town Hall at the sideline of the ongoing Africa Food Systems Forum 2023 in Dar es Salaam.
The Youth Town Hall is an event to develop the youth agenda to inform policy, practice and programmes that engage and/or are created to support young people.
Mr Bashe said at the event they pitched for more than 2 billion US dollars for the next six years.
“What I want to tell the youth is that the international community and development partners have shown their commitment to support the flagship programme for the next six years,” the minister assured.
Elaborating, Mr Bashe noted that in the BBT the government is not just dwelling on farming, livestock keeping or fishing but the entire ecosystem of the production, from the input to the production, to the processing, to the market, up to the consumption.
The government will provide a youth with an average of a minimum of 10 acres and in every feedlot the government will give an average of the minimum and average of 10 cows.
Zanzibar President Dr Hussein Mwinyi graced the Youth Town Hall event at which he led the fundraising for the BBT programme.
Speaking when launching the event, President Mwinyi said the political will has been growing at a high pace in Africa, aiming at supporting the youth and women in agribusiness.
Dr Mwinyi stated that the BBT programme will create more jobs because the government has prepared participatory strategy and implementation plans to help the youth and women to thrive in the agriculture sector.
“Due to the growth of digital systems that drive agriculture growth, there has been an increased number of the youth as part of economic growth through agriculture in Africa,” he said.
However, he quickly stressed that there was still a low participation of the youth and women in the agriculture sector and livestock due to poor availability of resources, skills and lack of capital.
“It is important to address a challenge of lack of market, climate change and poor infrastructures for production as well as the issue of technology,” he argued.
On his part, US Ambassador to Tanzania Michael Battle, said his country will continue supporting Tanzania’s efforts in improving agricultural systems including the BBT programme and others.
“About 25 per cent of the USAID budget goes to supporting Tanzania, now we are going to assess and see if the programmes funded by USAID go in line with the current government’s direction,” he said.
In fact, just yesterday, USAID Deputy Administrator Isobel Coleman announced two new USAID investments totaling 10 million US dollars (about 25bn/-) to conserve critical ecosystems and carbon sinks in Tanzania.
This includes an initial 8 million US dollars (about 20bn/-) to launch the USAID Tumaini Kupitia Vitendo (Hope through Action) project, a five-year partnership with the Jane Goodall Institute to strengthen government, village, and stakeholder management of natural resources in Tanzania.
Another 2.1 million (about 5.2bn/-) to improve the climate resilience of coasts and fisheries in Tanzania as part of the ongoing USAID Heshimu Bahari (Respect the Ocean) project.
These initiatives contribute to USAID’s participation at the Africa Climate Summit during which USAID announced 34 million US dollars (about 85bn/-) to support African climate leadership and contribute to economic growth and prosperity across the continent, including these two activities.
Source: Daily News