Posted on February, 20, 2019 at 09:05 am
POLAND is eyeing to cooperate on the irrigation schemes for farming in Tanzania as the country has enormous areas of arable land and a big potential to be a main food producer in the region.
The Polish Ambassador to Tanzania Mr Krzysztof Buzalski said the irrigation is a promising area of bilateral cooperation since both the countries rely to a big extent on their agriculture and the experience Poland gained during its economic transformation of the last 30 years may be applicable to Tanzania.
The internal stability and security in the country is also a factor that has attracted Poland’s interest in a long-term cooperation in the agriculture sector.
“The irrigation systems lower the dependency of the farmers on the seasonal rains and enable them to considerably increase their harvests as well as to reduce the risks resulting from climate change.
This is one of the ways Poland can contribute to boosting the Tanzanian economy and it could be a natural next step in cooperation between our countries,” Mr Buzalski said in Dar es Salaam yesterday at a meeting with the National Irrigation Commission (NIC).
The Ambassador underlined that cooperation and investments in such areas as irrigation needs a careful choice of modality of implementation and will involve several actors representing government, research and private sector in both countries.
Tanzania and Poland enj oy a mutual cooperation and friendship that already saw Warsaw extending a soft loan to Dodoma valued at 110 million US dollars in 2015 to support the food security and mechanization of agriculture in Tanzania.
The grain storage facilities are being constructed in eight different locations including the capital Dodoma.
Another project focuses on assembling tractors and agriculture machinery in Kibaha on the outskirts of Dar es Salaam. NIC acting Director General Dr Elikana Matekere said Poland investments had come on the right time given the fact that the country has lots of irrigation schemes but a few are developed.
He stressed that the country have lots of potential demarcated areas for irrigation farming and Poland is free to choose from which to put their investments.
According to NIC National Irrigation Master Plan (NIMP, 2002) the country has 29.4 million hectares suitable for irrigation with different levels of development potentials categorised in three potential areas, high, medium and low potentials.
Out of that potential area only 475,052 hectares equivalent to 1.6 per cent of the area under irrigation has been developed and contributes about 24 per cent of the national food requirement as of last June.
The National Water Policy (2002) set out the future direction for the water sector in achieving sustainable development and utilisation of the nation’s water resources.
Source: Daily News