TANZANIA – As world leaders gather at the 28th Conference of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC COP28), President Samia Suluhu Hassan has revealed that Tanzania intends to be a hub for food production in Eastern and Central Africa by 2030.
President Samia was chairing a side-line high-level meeting on agricultural opportunities for green growth transformation in Tanzania at the ongoing Conference of the Parties (COP28) in Dubai, United Arab Emirates (UAE).
The head of state invited stakeholders across the world to come and invest in tremendous agro-opportunities available as Tanzania rolls out the Building a Better Tomorrow (BBT) programme.
She added that the country intends to raise irrigated hectares to 8 million in line with the nation’s agriculture agenda that aims at making the sector grow by 10 per cent by 2030
“Welcome one, welcome all. Tanzania is ready to work with everybody ready to work with us,” Dr Samia said
However, Samia stated that to achieve the target, a total of US$1.8 billion (over 4.52tri/-) is needed to be raised in the next seven years.
Speaking about the BBT which kicked off last year, Dr Samia said the programme has been fostering youth and women’s engagement in farming to upscale job creation in the country with over 61 million people of whom 70 per cent are youths.
She said the programme embraces agro-green revolution by operating alongside irrigation systems which increase working hours per year to secure all workforces in sustainable production.
She added that BBT not only targets beating the Sustainable Development Goal (SGD 2) which advocates for zero hunger but also Goal 13 which alerts UN members including Tanzania to take urgent actions to combat climate change and its impacts.
According to her, COP 28 offers a pitch for Tanzania to realise its green agricultural transformative vision by utilising the presence of key stakeholders including heads of state,
In addition, international agencies such as the World Bank, World Food Programme (WFP), Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and African Development Bank Group (AfDB) have been supporting holistic development approaches in the country.
Dr Samia called potential private sectors from all over the world to cooperate with Tanzania in facilitating a green agricultural revolution through among others partnerships in entire agro-value chains.
This year’s Dubai global conference on climate change (COP 28) kicked off on November 30 and is expected to conclude on December 12 this year.
It is expected to speed up the transition to clean energy, catalysing climate financing by environment stakeholders delivering on old promises and setting the framework for a new climate financing approach.
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