TANZANIA: IT is now in the public domain that, while discussion around effects of El Nino has been “unfairly” targeting many Sub-Saharan countries, Tanzania wasn’t spared albeit with comparatively low magnitude.
On Tuesday last week, the World Food Programme (WFP) came with a rather shocking revelation regarding effects brought by El Nino rains stating that Tanzania lost 240,709 tonnes of crops valued at 69 million US dollars. These were rains in the 2023/24 season.
It is reported that, 90,000 livestock, valued at 62 million US dollars, were lost across 14 affected districts.
Additionally, the report stated that the widespread flooding impacted more than 51,000 households with over 200,000 people displaced.
The impact assessment was jointly done by the WFP, Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and Government of Tanzania.
It should be remembered that back in April 2024, Prime Minister of Tanzania, Kassim Majaliwa announced that at least 155 people died in the El Nino caused floods and landslides.
While giving a report to Tanzania’s legislature, the PM said that on top of the loss of 155 people, 236 people had been injured.
The biggest victim was the residents of Manyara, the northern region that is rich in pulses production, where it was reported last December that not less than 47 people died and 85 got injured.
Due to the severity of the situation, President Samia Suluhu Hassan had to cancel her stay in Dubai where she was attending a Conference on Climate Change (COP28).
Last August, Tanzania Meteorological Agency (TMA) released a weather forecast on what was set to transpire in the upcoming months of October to December, which stood to significantly affect production of agricultural crops most especially in a country whose sector is highly dependent on rainfall.
TMA announced that most parts of the country is set to receive above normal to normal rains during the season which expected to be influenced by El Nino conditions.
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The weatherman went on to mention areas that are set to be impacted by the season are areas that receive rains twice a year, that includes regions in Northeastern Highlands and few areas of Eastern part of Lake Victoria basin.
The regions in question are Kagera, Geita, Mwanza, Shinyanga, southern part of Simiyu, northern part of Kigoma, Dar es Salaam, Tanga, Coast—Includes Mafia Island, northern part of Morogoro, as well as the isles of Unguja and Pemba.
Notwithstanding, weather report went on to mention that normal to above rains are anticipated in Mara, northern part of Simiyu, Arusha, Manyara and Kilimanjaro regions.
TMA announced that the rains will officially start on October 2023 through January 2024. The country has got two rainfall seasons annually; unimodal, usually starts in October through December and Bimodal—starts in March through the month of June.
Now this El-Nino rains were anticipated to heavily impact areas that receives bimodal rainfalls as mentioned above. The reason behind this devastating condition was that, whereas El-Nino rains area set to largely fall in ‘msimu’ rains season, it was anticipated that would end at a time when masika rains, from March to June, falls in areas that get bimodal rains.
Sad story to pulses stakeholders, El Nino rains were forecasted to hit regions that leads in pulses production. For instance, Kigoma and Kagera, until a recent takeover by Rukwa, have been perennial leaders in dry beans production in the country.
Same way to Manyara, Arusha, Mwanza, Simiyu and Shinyanga have been leaders of pigeon peas and chickpeas production.
Southern Highland regions – Mbeya, Songwe, Iringa, Njombe, Ruvuma, Rukwa and Katavi – have not been mentioned in the forecast.
In regions like Kagera, which has been doing two seasons of dry beans production, usually starts its first season production around November or December so that by January or February, harvests are starting to flood the markets. It is not clear yet how much of pulses have been destroyed but given the fact that few amounts of pulses are seeded during November to December, a period which witnessed heavy downpour, it is highly unlikely that significant of dried legumes have been affected.
