Africa-Press – Tanzania. TANZANIA has strongly sounded its intention to engage serious investment partners in its industrialization agenda, strictly seeking to add value to the country’s endowed raw materials.
Speaking at the Turkey-Africa Economic Business Forum (TAEBF) which opened at Istanbul Convention Centre (ICC) in Istanbul on Thursday, Minister for Industry and Trade, Prof Kitila Mkumbo insisted that Tanzania and Africa at large must strive to attract serious investors in value addition and manufacturing other than engaging traders of African raw materials.
“For many years, Africa has been trying to lure investors from Europe, Asia and America to set up industries within Africa…we’ve not been very successful. In some cases where we established trade relationship, it has always been difficult as we end up getting traders of African raw material instead of investors who are going to put up serious industries in Africa for purposes of promoting value addition.
This is a big challenge we have, but the good news is that serious players are emerging. We see Turkey as a serious player, who wants to work with us to industrialize Africa. We’ve had good discussions with companies that are looking forward to setting up serious industries in Africa. We want companies that will help add value to African raw materials, we want to see African juice selling here in Turkey,” he said.
Prof Mkumbo said the forum provides a big opportunity for strengthening Turkey-Africa relations in the areas of trade, investment and economic development.
“It also helps to explore new avenues for deepening and furthering our engagement. This forum explores the future of Turkey-Africa engagement in a context of recently signed and ratified Africa Continental Free Trade Area (AfCTA)…this is also a very important aspect because going forward, Turkey and many other countries that want to engage with Africa, will not have only to engage with individual countries, but they will also have to engage with this very important regional body.
“We welcome Turkey and other countries that are here, to consider Tanzania as a serious investment destination in a number of areas, such as agro processing, health care, energy, mining and tourism, and we are particularly inviting you to visit our Mount Kilimanjaro, the highest mountain in Africa and second highest in the world. We also have nice beaches in Zanzibar and a wide range of national parks that attract many. We are happy that already friends from Turkey in their thousands are visiting Tanzania to enjoy some of those places,” said.
Minister Mkumbo said the forum is taking place at an opportune moment, where more than 75 per cent of the African countries have signed, ratified and committed themselves to implementing the AfCTA
“It is important for our friends in Turkey to understand what this means in term of our future relationship. At least 42 countries have ratified the agreement. It is a free trade area in the world that is going to be the biggest, representing 1.3 billion people, talking about 3.4trillion US dollars in terms of investments within the area. We are talking about a wide scope of area to cooperate in trade and services, including air transport and investments. We will also be cooperating in areas of intellectual property rights” he said.
Minister Mkumbo said that at the moment, Africa needs economic liberation after attaining independenc almost six folds back, saying this requires the countries in the continent to closely work together.
“At the moment, shamefully African countries trade very little among themselves at only around 17 per cent compared to other continents like Europe that trade at more than 60 per cent and America which trades by more than 50 per cent. We want to take the figures much higher, and in this endeavor, we at the government need the private sector to work with us to expand business in Africa,” he said.
He said Africa has a more active labour force (youngest population) and natural resources, and it is the only continent which is largely unpolluted. Education systems are improving as majority of the people in the continent are attending at least basic education, he said.
The third edition of the forum opened in Istanbul, Turkey with optimism to strengthen businesses and investments. At least 100 entrepreneurs from Tanzania supported by CRDB bank in collaborations with Go Extra Miles Safaris attended the two day from.
The Forum which was honored by Turkey President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, included a ministerial meeting, business to business (B2B) debates, signing ceremonies, and panels in which several topics such as cooperation in agriculture, pandemic, innovation and financing were discussed.
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