AGCOT: Tanzania’s Green Revolution Corridors Must Be Built on Equity, Climate, and Commonsense

By Juma Msafiri

Tanzania stands on the threshold of a transformative national journey — one that demands courage, clarity, and collective vision. The Southern Agricultural Growth Corridor of Tanzania (SAGCOT), a trailblazing initiative that sought to unlock the country’s agricultural potential, now hands over the baton to a broader, bolder vision: the Agricultural Growth Corridors of Tanzania (AGCOT).

This transition from SAGCOT to AGCOT is not a mere rebranding exercise. It is a strategic realignment of national priorities to respond to food insecurity, climate stress, rural inequality, and a fast-evolving continental development agenda. It is about scaling local success to national sovereignty — economically, ecologically, and socially.

Launched with strong backing from President Samia Suluhu Hassan, and guided by the Presidential Food and Agriculture Delivery Council under the seasoned stewardship of Hon. Mizengo Kayanza Pinda, AGCOT is Tanzania’s concrete response to the Dakar 2 Summit call for every African nation to establish a national agriculture delivery mechanism.

However, if AGCOT is to be more than a scaled-up version of SAGCOT, we must first acknowledge the mixed legacy of development corridors in Africa.

A sobering new report titled “Towards More Sustainable and Inclusive Development Corridors in Africa” (Bignoli et al., 2024), born of four years of deep field research in Tanzania and Kenya, exposes the cracks in the corridor model. The study identifies eight key challenges facing corridors: poor environmental assessments, fragmented planning, weak governance, exclusion of communities, rising inequality, biodiversity damage, disregard for climate risks, and inadequate water management.

Tanzania’s AGCOT must therefore not just replicate infrastructure — it must reinvent intent.

From Transport Corridors to Transformation Corridors

Historically, many African development corridors have functioned more as transport corridors — corridors of extraction, moving raw resources from the periphery to ports, often bypassing the communities they intersect. This must not be AGCOT’s fate.

Instead, AGCOT must emerge as a transformation corridor — one that facilitates climate-smart agriculture, democratizes market access, respects land rights, enhances biodiversity, and generates inclusive green jobs. The corridor should not just be a strip of infrastructure. It should be a belt of opportunity stitched together by equity, evidence, and ecological sense.

The SAGCOT Experience: Achievements and Lessons Learned

The Southern Agricultural Growth Corridor of Tanzania (SAGCOT) has been pivotal in reshaping the nation’s agricultural trajectory. By early 2024, the initiative had integrated approximately 903,000 smallholder farmers into inclusive value chains spanning crops like tea, potato, tomato, avocado, rice, and soybean, as well as dairy and horticulture. This widespread inclusion has enhanced livelihoods and catalyzed productivity — exemplified by rice yields in Mbarali jumping from 2.1 to 10 tons per hectare through the adoption of the System of Rice Intensification (SRI).

Financially, SAGCOT surpassed expectations, mobilizing USD 6.34 billion in total investments — USD 5.02 billion from public infrastructure (roads, energy, irrigation) and USD 1.32 billion from private agribusinesses and value chain actors. However, despite these successes, challenges remain. Reports highlight uneven consultation processes and unresolved land tenure complexities, especially where customary rights were poorly documented or unrecognized, limiting equitable access to corridor benefits. These lessons — from the power of coordinated investment to the necessity of inclusive governance and robust land systems — now inform the nationwide AGCOT rollout. As Tanzania enters its next chapter in agricultural transformation, integrating these insights is vital to ensure the model’s success across new corridors and communities.

Development Must Begin With the People

One of the most compelling findings from the DCP report is the gap between corridor rhetoric and lived realities. In Kenya, projects like the LAPSSET and Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) show that infrastructural ambitions, when poorly governed, can lead to land dispossession, social displacement, and ecological harm.

AGCOT must tread differently.

From Kilombero to Kigoma, from Mbeya to Manyara, corridor development must begin with meaningful local consultation — not performative workshops, but participatory planning that incorporates the voices of women, youth, pastoralists, Indigenous peoples, and informal traders. Legal commitments to inclusion must be implemented, not just cited.

Moreover, corridor design must address the question: Who benefits?

If benefits accrue only to large investors or urban-based agribusinesses while smallholders remain laborers on their ancestral land, then AGCOT will have failed in its mission. True agricultural transformation empowers farmers with knowledge, access to inputs, secure land tenure, and equitable market opportunities. It encourages cooperatives, protects communal lands, and strengthens extension services.

A Corridor That Thinks Like a Watershed

The AGCOT model must also recognize that agriculture does not happen in a vacuum — it occurs within watersheds, across ecosystems, and under a changing climate. As such, the corridor must think like a watershed and plan accordingly.

In SAGCOT, research by DCP partners modeled the Rufiji and Little Ruaha river basins, revealing major risks to water flow, quality, and seasonal availability. Climate projections show warming of up to 1.8°C and erratic rainfall patterns that will impact water availability for irrigation, livestock, and hydropower.

AGCOT must embed Integrated Water Resource Management (IWRM) as a foundation, not an afterthought. Every cluster — whether in the Lake Zone or Southern Highlands — must be backed by data-driven hydrological assessments. Local water committees, basin boards, and village governments must have a seat at the planning table.

Biodiversity is Infrastructure Too

Development corridors often fail to account for biodiversity — not just in terms of species, but the ecosystem services that support agriculture: pollination, soil fertility, water regulation, and climate resilience.

In Kilombero, SAGCOT’s experience showed how farming expansion could threaten wildlife corridors and lead to human-wildlife conflict. AGCOT must adhere to the mitigation hierarchy: avoid harm where possible, minimize where unavoidable, and compensate when necessary. International standards like IFC’s Performance Standard 6 must guide investor operations.

Planning tools like InVEST, KESHO, and the Global Infrastructure Impact Viewer are already available. AGCOT must institutionalize their use and train planners, local leaders, and investors in scenario-based planning that factors in land use change, ecosystem value, and community priorities.

AGCOT Must Deliver the SDGs, Not Just Outputs

If Tanzania is to truly “Feed Africa,” then AGCOT cannot measure success solely in kilometers of road or hectares of commercial farms. It must be evaluated by its contribution to the Sustainable Development Goals — especially SDG 2 (Zero Hunger), SDG 13 (Climate Action), SDG 15 (Life on Land), and SDG 10 (Reduced Inequality).

To achieve this, the Presidential Delivery Council must establish a national dashboard for AGCOT indicators — one that monitors not just inputs and investments, but equity, environmental integrity, and local ownership.

Crucially, AGCOT must align with Tanzania’s commitments under the UNFCCC, CBD, UNCCD, and African Union’s Agenda 2063. This means ensuring all corridor activities are net-positive — for both the people and the planet.

The AGCOT Legacy Starts Now

Tanzania is uniquely positioned to lead Africa’s new agricultural narrative. With a stable political environment, a visionary presidency, and a vibrant ecosystem of researchers, farmers, and entrepreneurs, the AGCOT model can be Africa’s blueprint for climate-resilient, inclusive, and sovereign food systems.

But we must move with intention. We must listen before we build, consult before we compensate, and regenerate before we extract.

AGCOT can be the corridor where infrastructure meets inclusion, where climate resilience meets local wisdom, and where growth meets justice.