Administrator Samantha Power at a Press Gaggle at the Tanzania Horticulture Association

ADMINISTRATOR SAMANTHA POWER: Good morning, everybody. I'm Samantha Power, the Administrator of USAID. I feel incredibly privileged to be here in Tanzania, a country that USAID has made investments in over many decades, in partnership with the Tanzanian people. 

I had a chance to talk to farmers here who are part of this really extraordinary agricultural surge that Tanzania is in the midst of. Of course, President Samia has tripled agricultural investments just over the last year. USAID today is announcing an additional $5 million in support for Tanzanian food security that will provide support to farmers to obtain access to seed technology, to training, especially to deal with changing weather patterns, climate change, as well as support to avoid food waste, and to enhance storage. 

Today's $5 million announcement comes on top of $14 million that we have invested in the agricultural sector here in Tanzania, just in the last nine months. So we see the commitment that Tanzania’s young people, Tanzanian female smallholder farmers, and the government are making to the agricultural sector. We also know that with COVID, supply chain challenges, global inflation, exacerbated by Putin's invasion of Ukraine, and of course, again, climate change, that food security and food security resilience are increasingly important.

And one of the things that USAID is supporting is the government's effort to potentially invest here in a fertilizer hub, because of a desire not to be dependent on importing fertilizer from other parts of the world, given what we've seen over the last year or two with those increased fertilizer prices. I talked to farmers as I walked in about conditions here and I asked, “how's the weather?” They said “the weather's great.” I said, “how are the fertilizer prices,” they said “the fertilizer prices are terrible.” They're a little bit better now that I think they've stabilized, but that has been very, very difficult for farmers. And so USAID is eager to support efforts in this country to ensure more stable access to fertilizer to be able to support the incredible talents and commitments and dedication of Tanzania's farming population. 

We see huge potential here. Between 60 percent to 70 percent of Tanzanians are affected directly or indirectly by the agricultural sector, around 60 percent work in the agricultural sector in some way. And so we think that capacity for agriculture to bring about very significant increases in per capita wealth and economic growth and to account for a larger share of the GDP here in Tanzania, we think that potential is extraordinary. So with that, I'm eager to take your questions. 

Thank you so much. 

QUESTION: You have spoken about investments in Tanzania about storage for farmers. Some of the concern is that they don’t have place to store, for the farmers to use. [inaudible] How are you helping address storage concerns in Tanzania?

ADMINISTRATOR POWER: Thank you. Storage is definitely a part of what we hope to use today's announcement of an additional $5 million to support. I very much agree this is not just a problem in Tanzania, it’s a problem in many of the countries that USAID works, where there are inefficient storage methods and a lot of what these farmers work to produce gets lost, which means less profits, and less of an ability then to invest in subsequent years. 

We think the private sector has a critical role to play here. Those agro businesses that are making use of the produce or active in food processing, USAID is reaching out to them, along with Minister Bashe and the effort by the Ministry of Agriculture, to ensure the equivalent of kind of public-private partnerships. We hope to have more to say on that in the future.

But the other part of what enhances food storage and diminishes waste is information systems. It is actually doing a better job mapping where a farmer has produce that has been harvested at a particular time so that some agro business or some shopkeeper or some individual active in the market is able to collect that produce at the appropriate time. So that for example, the tomatoes are not left out in the sun for too long and then spoil. And so those efficiencies that we think technology can also help with are going to be part of what we work with organizations like TAHA and with the government to bring to bear. 

There's a lot of learning that USAID has gathered from our work all around the world and a lot of learning even that we glean from the American farming sector. And part of what we want to do is, working with TAHA, which once — when USAID first started the partnership with TAHA 17 years ago, it was an organization of just five individuals. Now it is 18,000 individuals who help get this learning about how to optimally store food to the farmers in a timely way. So that is the kind of insight and hopefully information systems that can be scaled across Tanzania in the coming months and years.

QUESTION: You [inaudible] a potential fertilizer hub. When is that likely to take off? 

ADMINISTRATOR POWER: I think right now, the government has done a lot of thinking about this over the years and probably would be the best source, Mr. Bashe and others, to pose that question to because this is fundamentally a Tanzanian initiative with USAID support. But we are right now, sponsoring some assessments about which kind of fertilizer would be best produced here and whether the soil is promising, because of course, one has to have the natural ingredients. We also want to look at supply and demand. 

President Samia said to me her vision, of course, is for Tanzania to be a food exporter, for the continent and beyond, that is already happening with avocados, which are now going to the European Union, to India and to elsewhere. We are excited for that to happen with other produce, other fruits and vegetables and other crops. But we were also very intrigued by the idea of fertilizer potentially being something that helps build food security resilience, not only in Tanzania, but in the region as a whole. But again, still looking at the timeline and the blueprint for rolling that out. And I would refer you to the Tanzanian government, for your best estimates.

QUESTION: USAID has been supporting conservation programs in Tanzania, should we expect something new in this area?

ADMINISTRATOR POWER: Well, I don't have anything to add right now about conservation programs, beyond saying how critical they are to us, and how proud we are of the tradition that we have established here in Tanzania, in support of conservation. Globally, this is a growth area for donors. We see, of course, the importance of conservation to lowering emissions, to tourism, to so many parts of building sustainable economies in Africa and beyond. 

Thank you.