Tanzania has become Africa’s third largest exporter of foodstuffs to the rest of the world. This East African country is leading the EAC region.
Its food crop production reached 9.3 million tons in 2018/19, compared to 9.7 million tons 2014/15 (-4 per cent). Among the country’s main staple crops are cassava, potatoes and bananas.
This is coming as growers in Nigeria are hoping to drastically increase the annual revenues from the export of mushrooms to the international market,
National President of the Mushroom Growers, Processors and Marketers Association of Nigeria, Michael Awunor has said.
Awunor stated that Nigeria is determined to earn 10 percent of the world mushroom market.
According to him, the Nigerian economy is dominated by crude oil, which accounts for more than 83% of the country’s export earnings, but mushrooms offer so much hope to contribute significantly to the country’s GDP and the economic diversification drive.
“It is estimated that the mushroom sub-sector along the value chain could provide 16 million skilled, semi-skilled and unskilled jobs to the teeming unemployed universities, polytechnics and colleges of education graduates, vulnerable youths and women”, he told Daily Trust.
Crop exports, however, accounted for 1.9tri/- ($830million), which equates to nine per cent of the total value of Tanzania’s exports in 2019, compared to 1.8tri/- (793million) in 2015, representing an increase of 5 per cent.
In Africa, a continent with severe food insecurity challenges, most food comes from abroad. Between 2016 and 2018, about 85 per cent of food was imported from outside the continent.
The index further projects that even as its population grows; net food imports to Africa are expected to triple by 2025 as undernourishment grows by one-third.
