Author: BERNARD LUGONGO
AfricaPress-Tanzania: TANZANIA’s tourism attractions, Tanzanite and agricultural products, are set to earn more markets in China following recent massive media promotion in the country.
Against that backdrop, the Ambassador of Tanzania to China, Mbelwa Kairuki, has appealed to the Tanzanian business community to get set for optimizing the opportunity that would be created by high demand of such products in the market in China.
Part of media promotion was undertaken on Thursday when Ambassador Kairuki appeared on one of the China’s major television channels, Hainan, in Beijing.
The programme was sponsored by the Hainan small province as part of its strategy to enable products from outside China get markets in the second largest economy in the world.
It is aimed at making manufacturers of the products from outside China to use the province as the hub for importing and selling their products in the Asian nation.
On June 1, 2020, Chinese authorities released the Overall Plan for the Construction of Hainan Free Trade Port (“the Masterplan”), a large-scale plan to transform the entire island province into a Free Trade Port (FTP) – making it the largest special economic zone in China.
Hainan Province, an island at the southernmost point of China is best known for its sandy beaches and resort-lined coast.
Due to its proximity with ASEAN nations, the Hainan FTP acts as a frontline to China’s integration with Southeast Asian countries.
This has created new opportunities along with China’s Belt and Road Initiative, on the basis of which Hainan will be an important node on what is referred to as the “Maritime Silk Road”.
Ambassador Mbelwa was invited to the television programme for an interview hosted by the most commercially successful beauty blogger in China, Ms Zhang Mofan.
She has over 100 million followers on social media in China, and over 15 million people followed the live programme on which Ambassador Mbelwa marketed Tanzania’s tourism products, Tanzanite and agricultural products such as coffee, cashew nuts and cotton.
In 2017, Ms Mofan was awarded as the online influencer with the highest commercial value by Sina Weibo.
According to Ambassador Kairuki, the television programme has enabled the Chinese market to know Tanzania’s products, and thus would lead to a high demand for those products in the near future.
Through the programme, Ambasssador Kairuki called upon Tanzanian businesspeople to exploit the market in China by registering with China’s online marketing platforms in order to sell their products.
For instance, Alibaba online marketing platform allows companies outside China to register with it and sell their products in China.
In line with this, he advised Tanzania’s private sector to effectively use the Hainan Free Trade Zone as a hub for importing their products in China.
