KATAVI Region has set aside 112,425 acres of arable land suitable for food and cash crop production, it was revealed here on Wednesday.
The initiative is paramount for the region to promote its potential investment opportunities it has been endowed with.
Equally in efforts to make use of its potential which is still underutilised, the Regional Commissioner Mwanamvua Mrindoko has invited strategic local and foreign investors to explore untapped potentials and investment opportunities available in the region.
“The region has set aside 112,425 acres of arable land that is suitable for food and industrial crop production which is paramount for the region to promote its potential investment prospects we have in our region,” she emphasised.
Elaborating, Ms Mrindoko further explained that Katavi region could be turned into a national breadbasket and as well as for neighbouring countries only if serious local and foreign investors accorded the agricultural sector proper attention.
“Obviously with the region endowed with richness of untapped potentials, the sky is limit for small, medium and large scale investors envisage to invest in agro-industry,” Ms Mrindoko told the ‘Daily News’ in a recent phone interview.
Katavi is among the region which makes up six regions in the Southern Highlands Zone known for cereal production others being Ruvuma, Njombe, Rukwa, Mbeya, and Songwe.
Ms Mrindoko, also, said they have set aside an area special for an industrial park. The region shares borders with the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) on the eastern part and Burundi across Lake Tanganyika.
She further said that the region has been endowed with various investment opportunities in agriculture, tourism, hospitality, mining, livestock, forestry, education as well as factories and fisheries. Ms Mrindoko further explained that serious investors can also utilise cash crops like cotton, cashew, palm and sunflower.
“The raw materials can be used in industries, as well as food crops like maize, beans, rice, cassava and sweet potatoes. “There is also potential to invest in the sectors that produce livestock products like milk, skin and hides as well as animal feed,” she added.
Katavi is famous for the production of maize. Tanzania is ranked among the top 25 maize-producing countries in the world for the last two decades
