- Questions are lingering about US food aid to Tanzania that targets schools, with critics terming it unnecessary.
- US food aid to Tanzania has been ongoing for the past decade.
- Tanzania now wants the US to buy the food from Tanzanian farmers and fortify it in public.
An ongoing program of US food aid to Tanzania has come under sharp scrutiny after the public in East Africa’s second largest economy took to social media condemning the support from the American people.
At the moment, X (formally Twitter) is awash with Tanzanians and its thousands of nationals in the diaspora questioning the safety of US food aid which authorities in the country received recently.
Raising more questions was the fact that the food aid was not distributed to the general public but to hundreds of schools.
In its defense, the Tanzania Bureau of Standards (TBS) has issued a public statement saying the food consignment was safe.
The aid under contention has been granted by the US government in collaboration with Global Communities. TBS maintains that the food aid “followed all the necessary inspection procedures in importation and that it is safe.”
US food aid to Tanzania targeting malnourished children
The standards agency says that the donation was needed because school children were malnourished and hence the distribution fortified rice. The donated fortified bags of rice went to over 300 schools in the country under a programme called ‘Pamoja Tuwalishe’.
The program is conducted by the US, in collaboration with Global Communities, and they donated pinto beans, and sunflower seeds as well.
Defending the donation, TBS Public Relations and Marketing Manager, Gladness Kaseka said; “We will continue to receive and distribute this food aid…but we will also manage it responsibly and ensure that any and all food products entering the country meet global and national safety standard.”
Read also: Tanzania food security: Tabora irrigation schemes setting regional precedence
Can a recipient give terms and conditions to a donor?
In the midst of the social media storm of concerns over the fortified US food aid to Tanzania, the latter is reported to have given its donor, the US, conditions with which to provide this food security support.
“Tanzania, which has been receiving US food aid for a school feeding programme for the past 14 years, now wants to attach conditions on how the aid from American farmers is delivered to the East African nation,” reads the media report in part.
“Aid conditionality usually refers to the practice of donors attaching conditions to recipients to enhance the effectiveness of aid,” the media report explains.
With mounting criticism and pressure from the public, Tanzania appears to be issuing conditions to the US as and when it donates food. Tanzania’s Agriculture Minister Hussein Bashe is reported to have delivered the said conditions to the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA).
The conditions include two publicized ones which are: The U.S. must buy rice and beans for the school feeding programme from Tanzanian farmers and that fortification of the food for school children should be undertaken within the country in plain sight.
“We have informed the NGO that is implementing the school feeding project in primary and secondary schools to tell the Americans that there is rice and beans in this country,” Minister Bashe told the press.
“Therefore, the money that they are using to give American farmers should be given to Tanzanian farmers,” the minister asserted.
As for the public’s concern over safety of the food aid, the minister said, to ally the concerns; “fortification of the rice and beans should be done in Tanzania to avoid suspicion on donor motives on the types of extra nutrients that are added to the food.”
In conclusion, “our country is self sufficient… there was no need whatsoever to import food from the US for Tanzanian school kids when everything is available locally.”
True to the minister’s assertions, it is reported that Tanzania expects to have a bumper rice harvest this year. The estimates show that the country will harvest five million tonnes of rice this year, up from an estimated 2.3 million tonnes during the same period previously.
Given the fact that national demand for rice across Tanzania stands at slightly over one million tonnes, the country is facing an enormous amount of surplus of the staple.
Traditionally, Tanzania is a regional food basket, with neighboursKenya, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Rwanda and other East and Central African countries offering a market for the surplus grain.
So why do its schools need food aid from half way across the world?
US food aid to Tanzania; trouble in paradise
A very fiery debate is ongoing on social media about the US food aid to Tanzanian schools, a country that, as pointed out, has surplus rice among other cereals. The social media debate was triggered by a tweet from the US embassy in Dar es Salaam, which unwittingly, was proud of its food aid delivery.
Local media reports that; “The American embassy said on its X account yesterday that the US Department of Agriculture, in collaboration with the NGO Global Communities, has delivered a donation of ‘fortified rice, pinto beans, and sunflower seed oil from American farmers directly to schools in Tanzania’s Dodoma region.”
After that tweet, Tanzanians begun to raise questions as to why a food self-sufficient country was receiving food aid from Washington. Well, this is one of those, ‘too little, too late’ scenarios because the US awarded the NGO, Global Communities, aid under a project called Pamoja Tuwalishe (together let’s feed them).
The project is meant to support inclusive school feeding in Mara and Dodoma regions and to support the rollout of the Tanzanian government’s new National School Feeding Guidelines.
Pamoja Tuwalishe program has been running for over a decade now and over its tenure, the project aims to provide 3,830 metric tonnes of US donated food commodities and to fund the procurement of another 1,565 metric tonnes of locally grown and purchased maize, beans and sunflower oil.
“It began implementing the first phase of the McGovern-Dole Food for Education project in Tanzania in 2010 with funding from the USDA…the programme is now in its fourth phase,” explains , Global Communities on its website.
