His Excellency President John Pombe Joseph Magufuli’s speech given during the dissolution of the 11th parliament in Dodoma, Tanzania, on 16th June 2020 “Along with other things, we have continued to place emphasis on agriculture and livestock keeping. As you may know, agriculture is still the backbone of our country’s economy. It contributes approximately 25 per cent of foreign exchange, 30 per cent of the GDP, 65 percent of industrial raw materials, 70 per cent of all employment in the country and 100 per cent of our food needs. Thus, in the past five years we have continued to prioritise the agriculture sector. We have increased the amount of agricultural inputs and equipment (quality seeds, fertilizers, pesticides, tractors, etc.), we have increased the production of strategic crop seedlings, we have built and renovated the irrigation schemes and crop storage facilities, and we have looked for markets and strengthened the cooperatives. In addition, we have expanded the pastoral farming areas from 1.4 million hectares in 2015 to 5 million hectares in 2020, thus helping to reduce the number of conflicts between farmers and pastoralists. We have also built 104 new dipping troughs; we have increased the number of cows in artificial insemination from 105,000 in 2015 to 514,700 in 2020, we have provided livestock dipping chemicals and we have distributed veterinary drugs. We have also strengthened the protection and management of fishing resources by establishing three main special zones: Lake Victoria, Lake 1 Tanganyika and the Coast. In addition, we have controlled the use of illegal tools. (I remember the time when the Minister for Fisheries and Livestock, Honourable Mpina, was carrying a ruler with him to restaurants). In addition, we have encouraged and successfully increased the number of fish breeders from 18,843 in 2015 to 26,474 in 2020; we have increased the number of dams from 22,545 to 26,445, fish cages from 109 to 431 and the production of chicks from 8,090,000 to 14,531,487. In line with that, we launched the Second Agricultural Development Programme (ASDP - II) in 2017 with a view to making our agriculture more modern, commercial and productive. In addition, we have added TZS 208 billion to the Agricultural Development Bank (TADB) as capital through a loan from the African Development Bank. The government has also given TADB US$ 25.0 million (equivalent to TZS 57.8 billion) so that it can run the Smallholder Farmers’ Credit Guarantee Scheme (SCGS) aimed at setting up banks and financial institutions to increase lending to farmers and small- and medium-sized agricultural enterprises (SMEs). This means that in the past five years, the Government has given TADB TZS 324.8 billion to enable the bank to provide direct loans with lower interest rates to farmers, pastoralists and fishers worth TZS 166.9 billion. As a result of these steps, great achievements have been made. For example, food production increased from 15,528,820 tonnes in 2015/2016 to 16,891,974 tonnes in 2018/2019. Our annual demand for food is less than 14 million tonnes. In terms of commercial crops, production has increased from 796,502 tonnes to 1,144,1631 tonnes. In fisheries, the amount of the Nile perch from Lake Victoria increased from 417,936 tonnes in 2016 to 816,964 tonnes in 2020, and the length of fish has increased from an average of 16 centimetres to 25.2 centimetres. In addition, fish exports have increased from an average of TZS 379 billion in 2015 to TZS 692 billion in 2019. These are not trivial achievements.”