Tanzania: contesting and rejecting Green Growth
Ideas of green futures, popularly conceived and interpreted alongside sustainable development, have a deeper history in Tanzania and are reflected across sector-specific actions and policies (United Republic of Tanzania [thereafter URT] 2016). Just as in Kenya, Green Growth and Green Economy ideas arrived in Tanzania around 2010 (Buseth 2017). At the time, Tanzania lacked a national definition of ‘Green Economy’, although various sectors in the country interpreted it as ‘the economy that improves the human wellbeing [sic] and manages the environment sustainably; that ensures sustainable development and does not encourage environmental degradation, reduces greenhouse gas emission, integrates issues of social, environment and economic aspects in the development process, and takes into consideration the sustainability of future generations’ (United Republic of Tanzania 2011a).
Being a country whose economy is highly dependent on arable land, Green Growth and Green Economy ideas found greater relevance in the agricultural sector of Tanzania aiming to spur market-oriented agricultural transformation. Without making explicit reference to the green agenda, Tanzania’s Development Vision 2025 (TDV2025) envisions a future where ‘the economy will have been transformed from a low productivity agricultural economy to a semi-industrialized one led by modernized and highly productive agricultural activities’. The ‘Kilimo Kwanza’ movement (meaning ‘Agriculture First’) became the most ambitious initiative through which Green Growth ideas were introduced. Soon afterwards, Green Growth made headway in the establishment of the Southern Agricultural Growth Corridor of Tanzania (SAGCOT), a large-scale agricultural transformation programme targeting one-third of mainland Tanzania. In the following case study, we examine the conditions of implementation of Tanzania’s first Green Growth initiative under SAGCOT and consequent replacement of green with ‘brown’ ideas.
SAGCOT: a necessity or a fashion?
In 1999, Tanzania launched the Tanzania Development Vision (TDV2025). One of its main aims was to promote investment and innovative ideas regarding farming in order to attain a ‘high quality livelihood of its people and building a competitive economy capable of producing sustainable growth and shared benefits’ (URT 1999). The Kilimo Kwanza initiative, established in 2009 as a strategy to make use of the massive arable land that was not under cultivation, was partly implemented through TDV2025. Any developments that followed after 1999 were aimed at helping to realize Vision 2025 through sectoral developments and improvements.
In 2013, Tanzania launched the SAGCOT Green Growth Investment Framework under the auspices of a technical team of eco-agricultural partners. The SAGCOT blueprint served as a conscious strategy guiding SAGCOT implementation, justified by the need to control large-scale investment in agriculture in order to avoid undesired environmental problems. Awareness of the importance of green futures was articulated in environmental narratives that emphasized that agricultural sustainability depends on a sustained environment. The ‘green print’ therefore targeted reduced use of industrial inputs in agriculture to make the environment productive but at the same time sustainable. It aimed at building more resilient agricultural systems in a managed environment.
Whether all these strategies were implemented out of necessity or in the name of fashion, the ‘green print’ notes that, ‘around the world, governments, civil society, and the private sector are working together to develop and implement Green Economy and Green Growth Strategies to generate equitable, sustainable economic development’ (SAGCOT 2013; 9). This statement begs an important question. It does not show whether Green Growth was implemented because Tanzania wanted it, or rather because it was the fashion of the day. Essentially, this was a development blueprint that countries worldwide wanted to follow by greening their development policies.
Perhaps this perceived lack of ownership mixed with political ambitions explains how quickly the ambitious SAGCOT Green Growth Investment lost favour only four years after its launch. In 2017, a counter-plan for industrial development came into play (Baya & Jangu 2017), which departed from the SAGCOT ‘green print’ by focusing on industrial growth and means of controlling environmentally associated challenges. The Late President John Pombe Magufuli completely shifted focus from rural-centred development models articulated in earlier development policies, especially in the Kilimo Kwanza policy documents, to the creation of an industrial base, as articulated in his election manifesto for the 2015 general elections (CCM 2015). Magufuli hardly said anything about developing either the Kilimo Kwanza strategies or the SAGCOT package. He changed the tune to one of industrial development devoid of agricultural linkages although agriculture was also an important aspect for industrial growth. The environmental guideline produced in 2017 was a perfectly predictable effort. Although it did not cancel the SAGCOT initiative, the government did not do much to push it forward either. In this case, what followed from the hesitancy of government participation in the SAGCOT development agenda resulted in a change in the tone of approach to development, from a green to a ‘brown’-futures outlook. While the SAGCOT ‘green print’ elaborated areas for agricultural investment and environmental sustainability, the industrial approach in 2017 provided guidelines for where investors should consider establishing industries and for how to make the environment sustainable. Unfortunately, these two main policy documents on major production sectors do not refer to one another.
In 2021, a third five-year development plan was launched covering the period 2021–2026. This plan does not mention agriculture in general or SAGCOT in particular among the focus areas. The main emphasis, as with its predecessor plan 2015–2021, continues to be on industrialisation, infrastructure, tourism, and using internal resources for national development (URT 2021). That is to say, during the entire implementation period nothing much will be done to promote agricultural development. The plan does not even mention ‘green futures’, ‘Green Growth’ or ‘green corridors’. Instead there are several mentions of ‘industries’, ‘industrialisation’, and infrastructure.
Again, in her 57-page speech to the parliament, President Samia Suluhu Hassan mentioned nothing on green futures or agricultural Green Growth. However, she spent considerable time discussing agriculture in general, though with no mention of SAGCOT or any of its associated projects (Hassan 2021). On industrial development, the sixth phase president Samia Hassan reiterated that the focus would now be on developing industrial parks to stimulate production, transportation, and marketing of produce. The parks will be built in potential areas – areas with infrastructure connecting to market outlets in the East African and SADC regions (Hassan 2021, Lugongo 2021). This is a complete departure from the 2011 integrated industrial development strategy 2025 that linked together agriculture through Kilimo Kwanza and SAGCOT with industrialisation (URT 2011b).
Tanzania’s current development plans therefore indicate departure from Green Growth, particularly with reference to agriculture. They also indicate that Green Growth is not something conceptualised out of necessity but rather something that follows global fashion to attract foreign funding. The adoption of Agriculture Green Growth (AGG) for Africa in the 2010s was considered a panacea for addressing recurrent famine, drought, and environmental limitations on agricultural productivity, but implementations have been less serious and dynamic than they could have been. Countries may have opted for it hoping to revolutionise agriculture and increase yields of agricultural produce, but in the end little can be registered in the way of achievement in that regard.
Green Growth actors and drivers in the SAGCOT context
What may initially appear unclear is whether the ideas of development were internally generated and institutionalised instead of being personalised or imposed from somewhere else. Tanzania embarked on green approaches as soon as these ideas gained global currency in the 2010s. This was the time when the Kilimo Kwanza framework was already in place and a green-future strategy was meant to support its development. The conceptualisation and launching of SAGCOT was supported by international partners together with the state at the time. SAGCOT was conceived as a public-private partnership between the government of Tanzania, development agencies such as UK Aid, the World Bank, USAID, the Royal Norwegian Embassy, the Irish Embassy, and several large agribusiness corporations including Unilever and Yara (a Norwegian fertiliser company) (see Bergius et al. 2018). Global in nature, fine-tuned in terms of local processes, the Green Growth agenda has nevertheless lost focus in Tanzania’s development since 2019 during the reign of the late President Magufuli.
Part of the ‘failure’ of the project related to the government’s refusal to receive more loans from the World Bank to inject into the implementation of the SAGCOT.
1 The Citizen, Tanzania Government Cancels shs.100 bn SAGCOT Scheme, 17th May 2019. This is in stark contrast to the Kenyan situation where donor funds are received but little is seen in terms of green-growth implementation across sectors. For the Tanzanian case, political dynamics play a major role in the implementation of green futures. Arguably, SAGCOT was built on the preferences of President Jakaya Kikwete, and the regime shift in 2015 meant a change in priority development areas.
Since the early 2000s, the greening of Tanzania was ‘politically’ celebrated without seeing the means to its end (Chung 2018, Tups and Dannenberg 2021).
2 See for example https://foodfirst.org/putting-agriculture-first-without-farmers-and-land-reflections-on-tanzanias-road-to-green-revolution/ [Accessed 16.8.2021] Contrary to the promises, proposed green initiatives have enormous effects whether implementation has been realised or not. For instance, the slowed-down implementation of the SAGCOT has created losses to associated developments that emerged as part of the vision expressed within the plan (Tups and Dannenberg 2021). These speculative realities come at a time when the current government has said nothing about whether developments in the clusters will continue or not.
Returning to the question of whether Tanzania adopted Green Growth ideas out of necessity, or due to pressure, or because of collective global action reflects on how projects were conceived and funded. The major drivers in finances are mostly global actors who are seemingly caught up in a competition over investing money in local African contexts. The Green Climate Fund, for example, funds implementation of Green Economy development in the Simiyu Region, focusing on achieving sustainable provision of water and improving sustainable farming in the region.
3 https://www.greenclimate.fund/project/fp041 – [Accessed 19.8.2021] The fund, which operates in developing countries to help address the threats of changing environmental scenarios, is made progressive by contributions from developed countries in an effort to promote global governance – one of the aims of the Green Growth agenda.
In this way, global action comes to operate on both local and global stages. The Global Nature Fund has invested some money in the Kilombero valley to implement agriculture and conservation and to improve the livelihoods of the people (Global Nature Fund (n.d.)). Conservation activities are implemented in collaboration with the African Wildlife Foundation. Other financing bodies include but are not limited to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN 2019), Green Finance, the World Bank, foreign governments, and many others.
4 https://www.globalnature.org/en/green-growth-tanzania – [Accessed 19.8.2021]https://www.iucn.org/news/water/201902/blog-mainstreaming-inclusive-green-growth-tanzania accessed on 19th August 2021, https://www.greenfinanceplatform.org/country/tanzania - accessed on 20th August 2021. While such contributions come from outside, little may be available from the national coffers – meaning that projects may be lacking in terms of a sense of local ownership and sense of continuity, because they depend on availability of foreign funding. Current records indicate that over the past years of implementation, the private sector has invested approximately €700 million in the SAGCOT, with no financial support from the government.
5 https://sagcot.co.tz [Accessed 21.8.2021]Tanzania’s political rhetoric, and the difficulties of greening agriculture through SAGCOT
Greening agriculture is a political rhetoric of rural modernisation and future-making. These concepts are well recorded among government officials, investors, and progressive farmers, who are relatively few in number and account for a far smaller quantity of produce grown than peasants, who constitute more than 65 per cent of the entire labour force in Tanzania. Ideas of growth and development vary between government theorisations and peasants’ real-life experiences. This is the central cause underlying whatever misunderstandings each side may have that in turn leads to each side accusing the other of being a barrier to development. Fieldwork in the Kilombero valley, for example, has indicated that peasants have their own approaches to and ways of implementing development, which in the official government view may be seen as conservative. For example, studies (West and Haug 2017, Gallagher 2020) have indicated that local growers, villagers, and other actors in the implementation stage challenged the top-down approach of the SAGCOT framework.
While the government encouraged large-scale foreign and local investors in the Kilombero valley, local government authorities and villagers challenged the central government’s decisions by refusing to cooperate with investors or to give them land for investment opportunities. Local people considered private investment as land alienation and did not want it to happen. Land deals have characterised the whole process, making it irrelevant to peasants. Critics of the SAGCOT packages argue that focusing on large-scale investment at the expense of smallholder farmers was a miscalculation of the project.
6 https://www.africa-confidential.com/article-preview/id/5137/Concern_over_contract-farming [Accessed 19.8.2021]In 2009, when Kilimo Kwanza came into being and private investment in agriculture became massive, Tanzania experienced increased land disputes between different land-user groups, notably those involved in agriculture, pastoralism, and conservation (Odgaard 2002, Kusiluka et al. 2011, Goldman et al. 2014, Magigi and Drescher 2010). Disputes concerned investors taking huge chunks of land without developing them, and some of them ended up leasing the same lands to smallholder peasants. In this way, the local people considered the approach as not being for them: it was for the government and foreign investors. Endorsing the SAGCOT Blueprint in 2010, President Jakaya Kikwete said: ‘I am proud to say that because of the importance we attach to the SAGCOT initiative, my government was the first to commit funding ahead of all partners. We in government are convinced that the initiative supports our objectives for Tanzania Green Revolution’ (SAGCOT 2011: 5). To this end, by 2030 SAGCOT had to attain certain goals: to have 350,000 hectares under cultivation, transform smallholder farmers into commercial farmers, create more than 420,000 new jobs related to agricultural production, lift 2 million people out of poverty, increase annual revenues from agricultural produce to 1.2 billion, and ensure regional food supply. These were ambitious imaginings and expectations to be realised in selected fertile lands of Tanzania, with Kilombero being one of them. Such expectations were to be realised by both large-scale investments and small-scale producers. The only challenge here was that peasants did not sing the same tune as the government rhetoric.
The ideas and imaginings of development were statist and elitist-centred, considering the local people as passive actors with regard to whatever imposition came from above. Peasants view development differently, and imagine futures in terms of their own perspectives. Local articulations in Kilombero make it very clear that the interest lies in obtaining reliable and unrestricted markets for whatever they produce.
7 Interviews with, KT2, Michenga, 5th November 2020 and KT10, Nawigo – Malinyi, 9th November 2020. They have no idea of development blueprints. They even consider government efforts in the valley as not helping them much, as they continue to face problems concerning agricultural production, contrary to the views of the government, which believes it is making transformations in the rural areas.
8 Interviews with, KT14, Ngota, 10th November 2020, KT15, Ngota, 10th November 2020, KT16, Igawa, 11th November 2020 and KT1, Michenga, 5th November 2020. Although there is divided opinion on the SAGCOT among both proponents (West and Haug 2017) and critics alike, the challenges that it currently faces give energy to those who initially saw it as ill-conceived (Maganga
et al. 2016, Mbunda 2016). Bergius
et al. (2018) celebrated SAGCOT as a leading example of Africa’s Green Growth approach and as an investment blueprint for similar projects in Africa. However, what exists on the ground now makes it appear that travelling ideas are not always well understood; nor can they always be sustained in destination areas. They travel more due to collective action among foreign donors and national development agencies than necessarily as a way of solving local problems. Institutionalisation and formalisation remain contested among different actors, making it difficult to become progressive and successful (Buseth 2017, Sulle 2020).
Moreover, public-private partnership in the SAGCOT seems to have been a challenge to its implementation. As indicated in other sections of this contribution, much of the funding comes from private investors. The problem intensified when the government changed its views on receiving and administering the matching grant from the World Bank in 2019, and no statement has been offered by the government on any future funding.
9 https://www.africa-confidential.com/article/id/12602/Farming_gamble_fails [Accessed 15.8.2021] Other concerns were raised about land security and the protection of local breeds that under SAGCOT were about to be modified. The role of multinationals such as Monsanto, the agrochemical company Yara, the Gates Foundation, and the Alliance for Green Revolution Africa all added to the scepticism on the part of the local public, who considered the project as a large-scale form of land grabbing. Full implementation of the SAGCOT meant trickle-down influence on large-scale and small-scale investments in the region based on the operations of corridors of development, but in reality this is not the case (Hartmann
et al. 2021).
As to what indicates the pulling out of government funding in the projects, the sustainability trail is illusionary. The fifth and sixth Tanzanian governments made a U-turn in development priorities that weakens the ambitious SAGCOT multi-partnerships. Successful implementation of SAGCOT depends on strategic partnerships coming from agribusiness companies, farmers’ organisations, civil-society organisations and government agencies.
10 https://sagcot.co.tz/index.php/who-we-are/ and https://sagcot.co.tz/index.php/partnership/ [Accessed 20.8.2021] It seems that the present state lacks synergy in terms of full energy investment from all partners. Agribusiness companies and large-scale farmers are in the front line, pushing for the realisation of SAGCOT objectives. Small-scale farmers, who are also crucial partners, have less idea about what it means beyond their receiving of fertilisers and improved seeds. Lack of cohesion amongst partners worsened in 2019 when the government refused to take a loan as a ‘matching grant’ in the project. Investments that are already on the ground in implementation sites face uncertain futures if the synergy does not operate as expected. The multiplicity of the partners themselves is a challenge, given that mutual understanding is necessary to operate as one team. SAGCOT was built on 52 private-sector companies, 10 apex and farmers’ organisations, 34 development partners, foundations, research organisations, and CSOs, 15 Ministries of the Government of Tanzania, 12 Government Regulators, three Government Agencies, and four Public Financial Institutions.
11 https://sagcot.co.tz/index.php/partnership/ [Accessed 21.8.2021] Harmonisation alone is a big challenge. Government actors for their part are too numerous to operate with success. What we want to point out here is that the dim future does not only result from funding issues but is also partly due to an excess of organisational structures that fail to provide cohesion and which may involve unnecessary bureaucracy.