Tanzania Agricultural Development Study

Tanzania is a typical agrarian African country,although in recent years,with the development of the domestic mining industry,the agricultural share of GDP has decreased from half of the peak to about a quarter of GDP.However,the majority of the country’s population still live in rural areas and engage in agricultural activities.There are a large number of poor people in rural areas,and agricultural exports account for a considerable share of the export trade.As one of the birthplaces of human history,Tanzania has a long agricultural history and formed its own independent agricultural production system before the arrival of westerners.Zanzibar once became an important spice producing area in the Indian Ocean.However,the colonial rule interrupted the independent development process of Tanzania’s agriculture.In mainland Tanzania,the colonial authorities brought Africans into the cash economy through taxation,and introduced and promoted cash crop cultivation locally.After more than 70 years of colonial rule,Tanzania’s economy is highly dependent on export cash crops and plays the role of raw material supplier in the world market,which is highly susceptible to the price fluctuations of bulk products in the world market.After independence,Tanzania decided to take the road of socialism in order to break this dependent economic structure.During the socialist period,Tanzania established a series of state-owned enterprises that monopolized the purchase,sale and import and export of important crops,regulated the price of agricultural products and implemented the Ujamaa village program in rural areas.However,agricultural development policies in this period served the country’s overall industrialization policy,and failed to promote agricultural development fundamentally.Agricultural development experienced a series of ups and downs.In the mid-1980 s,facing a series of economic crises,Tanzania had to accept the economic restructuring required by the IMF,carry out political and economic liberalization,liberalize the intervention in agricultural production and take agricultural reform.China-Tanzania agricultural cooperation almost coincided with Tanzania’s independence.In 1964 and 1965,China and Tanzania signed a series of economic,trade and technical cooperation agreements.Under the framework of this agreement,China and Tanzania have carried out cooperation in various aspects.In the field of agriculture,China has assisted the construction of many state farms,agricultural extension stations and farm tool factories,and dispatched agricultural experts for technical cooperation.China’s early agricultural assistance helped Tanzania establish a series of agricultural projects,and Chinese agricultural technical experts brought Chinese agricultural development technology and experience to Tanzania,which to a certain extent met Tanzania’s agricultural development needs,promoted the progress of China-Tanzania relations,and realized China’s original intention of promoting bilateral agricultural cooperation.With China’s reform and opening-up and Tanzania’s economic structural adjustment,new changes have taken place in the main body,content,form and mechanism of China-Tanzania agricultural cooperation.China has made use of its capital,technology and management advantages to invest in Tanzania’s superior agricultural resources,deliver high-quality agricultural products to China and create jobs for Tanzania.In recent years,Chinese enterprises have invested in Tanzania’s agriculture on a large scale,expanded the entire industrial chain and built various supporting infrastructure for Tanzania,which to some extent alleviated the problem of overcapacity in China,and also promoted the improvement of Tanzania’s agricultural infrastructure and the increase of people’s income.To some extent,China-Tanzania agricultural cooperation makes up for the lack of agricultural development in Tanzania,but the size and breadth of cooperation only covers part of Tanzania’s agriculture and cannot fundamentally promote its agricultural development.Tanzania’s agricultural progress will be a slow one.