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TARI

So now the government through its Ministry for Agriculture has decided to take action to increase domestic production of edible oils. To do this, the government has developed several strategic approaches including upgrading peasant technology.

This initiative fits into the country’s overall industrialization initiative that targets mainly agricultural mechanization. By increasing funding for the set up of factories and smaller production plants, Tanzania is able to increase its output of edible oils.

However, the country needs to increase seed production hand in hand with increasing its value chain capacity. This is where the Tanzania Agricultural Research Institute (Tari) based in Dar es Salaam comes in. A globally-renowned research institute that develops hybrid seeds among other agricultural research works.

This comes as the IMF has downgraded economic prospects for countries in this cluster. The downgrades have, however, been offset relatively by projections for some commodity producers and exporters that were upgraded on the back of rising commodity prices.

The economic prospects between wealthy nations and low-income countries are expected to be divergent and this divergence will remain of great concern to multilateral lenders and world leaders. In wealthy nations, for example, aggregate output for the cluster economies is expected to regain its pre-pandemic trend path in 2022 and exceed it by 0.9% in 2024 whereas the cluster of nations comprise emerging markets and developing economies (excluding China) will remain 5.5% below their pre-pandemic forecasts in 2024.

This event should it occur as forecast will set back improvements in living standards.

Justice Makau’s ruling was as follows, “I find as decided in the Court of Appeal decision, the petitioner has a right to mechanise and adopt technology in its operations. The matter in dispute is therefore effectively concluded and settled in terms stated.”

If the cry of the workers’ Union is true, then this ruling threatens more than 50,000 workers’ jobs and allegedly, already over 10,000 tea pickers have lost their jobs to the machines.

However, the odds are pinned against the peasants, the Kenya Tea Growers Association says the loss of jobs has nothing to do with the machines but rather ‘…tea companies reducing their workforce through natural attrition.

Toxic substances that are contained in e-waste contaminate the soil; however, they do not stop with the topsoil.

Heavy metals such as mercury, lithium, lead and barium leak through the earth all the way to the table water contaminating groundwater.

Now groundwater is the basic source of all water that we consume because groundwater is the water that eventually resurfaces as springs, ponds, streams, rivers and lakes.

The National Treasury is projecting real GDP growth of 6.0 per cent and 5.8 per cent for 2021 and 2022 respectively and has used the same as the basis for its revenue projections. But this adds to the overall optimism being projected.

In September 2021, the Central Bank of Kenya Governor projected a 6.1 per cent growth rate for 2021 and 5.6 per cent in 2022.

The International Monetary Fund’s most recent forecast puts 2022 growth expectations at 6.0 per cent. The World Bank, on the other hand, projects growth to print at 4.5 per cent and 4.7 per cent in 2021 and 2022 respectively.

We really believe this optimism being projected around is largely irrational and the story of Kenya’s economic growth still remains a puzzle to us.