AfricaPress-Tanzania: ALL roads led to Bagamoyo town on Tuesday when former President Jakaya Kikwete and retired Ethiopian Premier Hailemariam Dessalegn visited a giant maize mill jointly financed by Tanzania Agricultural Development Bank (TADB) and the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA).
The mill is owned by Joydons Tanzania Limited Company and TADB has given the company 1.2bn/- to modernise the factory
After touring the mill, delighted Ethiopian dignitary turned to former President Kikwete and declared to the audience: “Tanzania can feed Africa if there will be exhaustive transformation of agriculture, livestock and fisheries sectors…This mill is evidence of this probability; it is evidence of the huge possibility of adding value to crops.”
He said he has been impressed by the kind of investment put in the industrial infrastructure, adding that the mill will spur good agricultural practices and agricultural productivity.
Dessalegn is the AGRA Board Chairman and President Kikwete is AGRA Board member.
TADB Board Chairman Ishmael Kasekwa said their board believes the investment cooperation between TADB and AGRA will trigger off the desired reforms in the agriculture, livestock and fisheries sectors. TADB, he said, will continue to offer soft loans to deserving applicants in the three sectors in order to support Tanzania’s industrial revolution.
TADB Acting Managing Director, Derick Rugemala, told the audience the investment was spurred by the great demand in the agriculture sector for that kind industrial infrastructure.
“Tanzania is witnessing massive post-harvest losses for lack of industries to process products of the three sectors. Because we are aware of this fact, we quickly and easily decided to support this mill to reduce post-harvest losses,” he said.
Rugemala said another factor that drove TADB and AGRA into supporting the company is that the company is owned by two women, adding that the two institutions hope the existence of such a modern mill will encourage regions surrounding Coast Region to engage in serious cereal cultivation, especially maize, and that the company will ensure maize growers have guaranteed market for their maize.
Joydons Tanzania Ltd Managing Director, Joyce Donati Kimaro, thanked TADB na AGRA for what she called timely critical investment support to their company. She said the company is buying crops from 1,500 farmers in Coast and Tanga Region and producing some 150 tonnes of maize flour a day and flour is sold to different regions countrywide.
She said with that kind of investment, the company will be able to serve a bigger number of farmers in the country by buying their crops because they need those crops as raw materials.
