Blue Economy in Tanzania is a hot topic and a high government agenda in Zanzibar and the mainland for the years to come. It will contribute to growth and business opportunities by utilization of its ocean resources for economic growth and improvements of livelihoods of local communities while preserving the health of the ocean ecosystem.

Tanzania has enormous water-related resources: the lakes Victoria, Tanganyika, Nyasa and Rukwa account for about 37% of the national area; a coastline of 1,424 km and hundreds of islands in the Zanzibar archipelago.

The Ministry for a blue economy looking to develop a sustainable utilization of its marine, lake and littoral resources and aims to become the lead country in Africa on the Blue Economy strategy over the next few years.

Agriculture is a critical economic sector, representing 28.7% of Tanzania’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and almost over 70% of the productive workforce.

And, it is the main source of food, industrial raw materials and foreign exchange earnings.

Since Tanzania is endowed with a diversity of climatic and geographical zones, farmers grow a wide variety of annual and permanent crops.

This includes food and cash crops as well as fruits, vegetables and spices.

Even though agriculture has a significant role in the national economy, its production and productivity are low because of lack of technology that forces them to rely only on rainfall which is seasonally erratic, unreliable and non–uniformly distributed.

Tanzania is welcoming investors and technology companies in the agricultural field to invest and utilize the fertile environment that Tanzania can offer to this sector.