Tanzania intends to construct the Mombasa grain centre to aid in the export of the country’s excess food supply. Kenya and Tanzania will be able to exchange surplus food supplies more easily because of the planned large silos. Between January and November 2021, bilateral trade between the two countries totalled US$905.5 million, thanks to the investment. Tanzania has previously established two-grain storage facilities in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and South Sudan, demonstrating its ambition in this area.
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Through the Mombasa grain centre, Tanzania will transfer agricultural commodities directly to Kenya. Presidents Samia Suluhu Hassan of Tanzania and Uhuru Kenyatta of Kenya have agreed to decrease trade barriers between their countries, resulting in a more favourable economic climate. The grain storage facility will be used by both the government and the private sector. Tanzania proposes to build a grain storage facility near Mombasa, Kenya’s coastal metropolitan island, according to Kenyan Agriculture Minister Hussein Bashe. Bashe went on to add that the ministry will act as an intermediary rather than directly selling grain exports.
Projected Success of the Mombasa Grain Centre
Grain outlets in Juba and Lubumbashi, according to the Tanzania Cereals and Other Produce Board (CPB), are already experiencing a strong economic climate. The Mombasa facility, they believed, would outperform the other two. According to 2019 figures, Tanzania exported about 97,000 tonnes of maise in 2019. This feature enabled the government to start working on a grain surplus plan with Tanzania’s Southern Agricultural Growth Corridor (SAGCOT). SAGCOT was created in 2010 with the goal of transforming Tanzanian agriculture and making it commercially viable in order to assure food security, boost environmental sustainability, and improve people’s livelihoods. In Tanzania’s lush southern islands, the Agricultural Growth Corridor cultivates maise, wheat, rice, sorghum, cassava, millet, beans, bananas, and sweet potatoes across 350,000 hectares.
The World Bank, a major donor of SAGCOT, stated that its goal is to encourage the use of new sophisticated technology and enhance smallholder farmers’ marketing tactics. This, in turn, will grow and build relationships between Tanzania’s agribusiness sector and smallholder farmers. Tanzania has recently reported a food surplus in the agricultural harvest. The East African country recorded a food surplus of more than 3.6 million metric tonnes in the fiscal year 2021/2022.
Tanzania’s venture in Kenya is not the first time it has proposed a grain stockpile in Mombasa. Bakhresa Group Limited, a food processing company, had indicated an interest in establishing a corn mill plant in Mombasa in the past, but the proposal never materialised. Due to the unrestricted movement of elements of production, commerce between the two nations will rise exponentially with the removal of trade obstacles.
