Tanzania

Tanzania's government told parliament it is negotiating a takeover of over 2,000 idle hectares of Mo Dewji's MeTL tea estates in Mbeya to restart production and protect farmers, despite MeTL's US$24mn loan from the AfDB.

Land grabbing did not disappear when the headlines faded. Across the world, corporations, investors and states continue to reshape control over land and resources, often through quieter, normalized processes.

The Haryana state government, India has signed MoU for 100,000 acres of farm land in Tanzania. The MoU said to enable Indian farmers and entrepreneurs to pursue agricultural ventures in the East African country.

A Dubai-based consumer electronics manufacturer, Maser Group, is making a major strategic pivot into agriculture and artificial intelligence infrastructure across Africa, committing $1.6 billion to farmland development and data centres in Nigeria, Ghana, and Kenya over the next two years.

The partnership aims to identify and develop large‑scale agricultural land, targetting an initial 10,000 hectares of irrigated farmland, with a potential expansion to another 10,000 hectares.

The investor, Pan-Tanzania Agriculture Developments Limited, has been allocated 62,000 acres in Kilwa District, Lindi Region, where it will cultivate cassava and process it locally for export to China

The project with MeTL will rehabilitate ageing tea estates, convert more than 1,000 hectares into organic plantations and upgrade processing factories to double production capacity. It will also establish at least 15,000 hectares of sisal plantations and a new 200-hectare macadamia plantation.

"Oman’s food-security programmes and water technology can link with East Africa’s arable land and examples are Kenya’s tea and coffee farms and Tanzania’s horticulture," the Chairman of East African Chamber of Commerce, Industry and Agriculture says

Prime Minister Kassim Majaliwa yesterday launched the Building Better Tomorrow (BBT) Programme’s Project I, which focuses on large-scale farming, with a funding boost of 129.71 million US dollars from the African Development Bank.

L'organisation faîtière des agences catholiques de développement en Europe et en Amérique du Nord appelle à un arrêt immédiat des projets de crédits carbone sur les sols mis en œuvre parmi les Maasaï du nord de la Tanzanie, après des processus jugés « douteux ».

Study finds that two large-scale carbon projects on the grazing lands of the Maasai in Tanzania have committed serious abuses and make traditional grazing practices impossible.

Norway pledges US$15mn towards the implementation of the Flagship 7 (Agricultural Masters Plan), which focuses on creating an enabling environment for replicating the SAGCOT model in three additional Agricultural Growth Corridors, namely Mtwara, Central and Northern Corridors.