Agriculture

Agriculture, livestock, and fisheries are crucial to Tanzania’s economic growth, employment, and poverty reduction. In 2024, the sector contributed 26.3% to GDP and employed 61.4% of the national workforce, growing 4.1% in 2024 and 4.0% in the first nine months of 2025.

Agriculture in Tanzania remains the backbone of the national economy and the largest source of livelihood for the rural population. The sector accounts for 23.6% of total goods exports, supplying the European Union (Belgium, Poland, Germany), the UAE, and Far East markets including South Korea, Indonesia, and China, while expanding into new markets such as the United States for cashew nuts. With 44 million hectares of arable land, diverse climatic zones, and extensive freshwater resources, Tanzania offers one of the most compelling agricultural investment landscapes in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Crops

The crops sub-sector alone contributed 16.1% to GDP in 2024 and is the engine of Tanzania’s agricultural transformation. Food crop production rose from 17.1 million tonnes in 2021/2022 to 22.8 million tonnes in 2023/2024, raising Tanzania’s Food Self-Sufficiency Ratio to 128%. The expansion has been driven by favorable climatic conditions, improved input supplies, targeted policies, and growing adoption of modern technologies in crop production.

Major food crops include maize, rice, pulses, bananas, sisal, and cassava. Other commercially and domestically important crops include paddy, sorghum, millet, potatoes, sweet potatoes, beans, oilseeds, vegetables, and fruits. Traditional cash crops anchor Tanzania’s agricultural exports and include cashew nuts, coffee, cotton, tea, and tobacco, with primary destinations across the European Union, the UAE, and Far East markets, as well as expanding flows to the United States.

Livestock

Tanzania’s livestock sector contributed 6.2% of GDP in 2023 and supports 4.6 million households within the value chain. The country has one of the largest and fastest-growing livestock populations in Africa and the world, with a cattle population of 36.6 million, the second largest in Africa behind Ethiopia, representing 11.0% of the African and 1.4% of the global cattle total. Sheep, goat, chicken, and pig populations also rank among the top ten on the continent. Between 2010 and 2022, Tanzania’s cattle, goat, sheep, and poultry populations surged by an average of 83%.

The total value of all livestock groups, including cattle, goats, sheep, pigs, and chickens, reached TZS 33.22 trillion in 2024/2025, up from TZS 30.49 trillion in 2023/2024. Meat exports grew 5.75% in 2024/2025 to 9,863.41 tonnes valued at USD 44.07 million, reaching 11 countries including Bahrain, Comoros, Hong Kong, Jordan, Kenya, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Vietnam. Goat meat accounted for 64.69% of total meat exports, remaining the leading export product.

Fisheries

The fisheries sector contributed 1.7% to GDP in 2024/2025 and employs about six million Tanzanians within its value chain. In 2023, Tanzania produced 513,802.47 tonnes of fisheries products, of which natural water fishing accounted for 479,976.62 tonnes, with freshwater fishing contributing 85% and marine fishing 15% of the natural water catch. Aquaculture contributed 33,825.85 tonnes, with products including farmed fish, seaweed, seagrass, and sea cucumbers.

The value of harvested fish from natural waters and aquaculture increased to TZS 3,429 billion in 2024/2025, up from TZS 3,174 billion in 2023/2024. By April 2025, total fishery product exports reached 44,317.78 tonnes, a 7.38% increase year-on-year, with Nile Perch fillets as the leading export product.

National Development Policies and Financing

The Agricultural Master Plan 2050 provides the long-term roadmap to modernize crops, livestock, and fisheries, supporting Tanzania Development Vision 2050 (DIRA 2050) and the goal of becoming a higher middle-income country. The plan focuses on expanding irrigated land, improving the use of modern inputs, promoting mechanization, strengthening extension services, reducing post-harvest losses, enhancing market access, and encouraging innovation, value addition, and employment for youth and women.

To deliver these objectives, 15 flagship initiatives have been designed alongside 20 prioritized commodities. Flagship targets include unlocking 1.5 million hectares for commercial agriculture, securing 1.2 million hectares of land ownership, expanding irrigated area to 1.2 million hectares, quintupling seed production, digitally registering 9.9 million farmers, and providing financing access to 1.7 million beneficiaries and 30,000 SMEs.

To accelerate implementation, the Ministry of Agriculture introduced the Agriculture Growth Corridor of Tanzania (AGCOT) initiative in 2025, building on the Southern Agricultural Growth Corridor of Tanzania (SAGCOT) launched in 2010. AGCOT covers the Central Zone, Southern Zone, Mtwara Zone, and Northern Zone, and is designed to strengthen agricultural production and productivity, improve domestic and international market access, enhance capital access, promote crop value addition, and facilitate input availability. AGCOT targets a USD 100 billion agricultural GDP, USD 20 billion in net exports, and 10% annual sector growth by 2050.

Financing the sector relies heavily on private capital, with agribusinesses facing structural barriers including funding mismatches, high financial exclusion, and limited collateral. The Private Agricultural Sector Support (PASS) Trust serves as the primary vehicle for de-risking commercial agriculture, having issued over TZS 2.6 trillion in credit guarantees since 2000, reaching 1.5 million smallholder farmers and youth- and women-led agribusinesses.

Investment Opportunities

Tanzania has a total land area of 94.5 million hectares, of which 44 million hectares are arable. Only 10.8 million hectares (24%) are currently under crop production, largely dominated by smallholder farmers cultivating less than five hectares with limited inputs and high reliance on rainfed production. Fewer than 4,000 large-scale commercial farms currently operate in the country. Of 29.4 million hectares suitable for irrigation, 2.3 million hectares have high development potential and 4.8 million hectares medium potential.

The country benefits from diverse climatic conditions that support crops suited to both tropical and temperate environments. Bimodal and unimodal rainfall patterns coexist across regions, making it very rare for Tanzania to experience total rainfall failure nationwide. Extensive water resources, including rivers, lakes, and underground sources, provide significant irrigation opportunities.

Priority investment areas in crops span commercial farming of strategic crops along the AGCOT corridors, irrigation systems and water harvesting infrastructure, local manufacturing of farm inputs and machinery, post-harvest facilities such as pack houses, cold storage, and warehouses, agro-processing of cereals, oilseeds, cashews, sugar, coffee, dairy, and fish, and export facilitation through auctions, logistics, and crop hubs. Specific commodity opportunities cover edible vegetable oilseeds (sesame, sunflower, palm oil, soya beans), maize, rice, cassava, legumes, horticultural crops (grapes, cloves, cut flowers, avocado), cashew nuts, sisal, cotton, and pyrethrum.

In livestock, the Government is actively pursuing private investment in livestock breeding, poultry and meat processing, fodder production, processed feeds, dairy transformation, leather processing, and vaccine production. In fisheries, opportunities include deep-sea fishing including agreements with foreign fishing companies, fish cage farming and deep-sea aquaculture, fish processing plants, fish feed production, and marine aquaculture targeting sea cucumber, crab, and seaweed. Tanzania’s 1,424 km coastline and 61,500 square kilometers of freshwater resources, including portions of Lake Victoria, Lake Tanganyika, and Lake Nyasa, alongside major rivers such as the Rufiji, underpin this potential.

For investors and businesses, agriculture in Tanzania combines unmet domestic demand, regional export potential through the EAC and SADC, growing access to global premium markets, and a clear policy framework anchored in the Agricultural Master Plan 2050 and AGCOT. Combined with active de-risking through PASS Trust and a private-sector-led financing approach, the conditions for agribusiness investment in Tanzania are increasingly aligned with investor requirements.

Last Update: April 2026