IN MEMORIAM — AGRICULTURAL SCIENCE

The Scientist Who Fed Two Million Farmers

The life, research, and enduring legacy of Dr. Dadili Japhet Majune, Head of Cashew Breeding at TARI Naliendele — Tanzania’s quiet architect of a better harvest, and a vision ahead of its time

Kilimokwanza Team, Nakuru, Saturday, April 5, 2026

There are people who see what others cannot yet see. Dadili Japhet Majune was one of them. Long before Tanzania’s cashew sector became a subject of policy debates, investment forums, and development programmes, Majune understood something fundamental: that the cashew nut was not merely a crop, but an entire industry waiting to be born. He knew its potential more deeply than most, and he spent his lifetime advocating for — and scientifically building the foundations of — a Tanzania that would do more than grow cashews and ship them away raw. He wanted his country to transform them.

On April 3, 2026, Tanzania’s agricultural research community lost one of its most consequential, least celebrated scientists. Dr. Dadili Japhet Majune, Research Officer Grade I (Mtafiti Daraja la Kwanza I) and Head of the Cashew Breeding Section at the Tanzania Agricultural Research Institute (TARI) Naliendele, died after a career spanning more than fifteen years of fieldwork, genetic trials, disease research, and mentorship. The announcement came from TARI Director General Dr. Thomas Bwana in a formal notice shared widely across Tanzania’s agricultural networks. The words he chose were measured, official, and inadequate to the scale of the loss.

He did not live to see the transformation complete. But the strides made in his lifetime — among them the emergence of cashew milk as a locally produced product, the expansion of roasted and packaged cashews for local and export markets, and the genetic improvements now embedded in hundreds of thousands of trees across the Southern Zone — suggest that the seeds he planted are, slowly, taking root.

This feature is an attempt to measure what he built, and what he believed.

“Bwana ametoa na Bwana ametwaa, jina la Bwana Lihimidiwe.” — Announcement by TARI Director General Dr. Thomas Bwana, April 3, 2026

I. A Scientist Who Grew Into His Science

From MATI-Mtwara to the Continental Stage

Dr. Dadili Japhet Majune’s academic biography is not that of a man born into privilege or fast-tracked through elite institutions. It is the story of a scientist who built himself methodically, qualification by qualification, each credential earned while already committed to the work.

He began at the MATI-Mtwara — the Agricultural Training Institute in his home region — graduating in 2010 with a Diploma in General Agriculture. It was a foundational credential, but it placed him in the right soil: the southern Tanzania coast, where cashew is king and research is urgently needed. Five years later, in 2015, he earned a Bachelor of Science in General Agriculture from Sokoine University of Agriculture in Morogoro — Tanzania’s flagship agricultural institution. He then reached the summit of his formal training in 2019 with a Master of Science in Life Sciences (Sustainable Agriculture / Bio-Engineering) from the Nelson Mandela African Institute of Science and Technology (NM-AIST) in Arusha.

That Master’s degree was not merely a credential. It was a research programme that would define a thread running through everything Majune did for the rest of his career — the conviction that cashew’s true value lay not in the nut alone, but in the entire tree, and the entire system surrounding it. More on that below.

By the end of his life, he held the position of Research Officer and Head of the Cashew Breeding Section at TARI Naliendele, the National Centre of Excellence for Cashew Research. He had authored or co-authored more than ten peer-reviewed publications in national and international journals, was recognised as an international consultant in the cashew value chain, and had conducted consultancies across Africa. He had represented Tanzania’s cashew science at the 16th African Cashew Alliance Annual Conference and Expo in Abuja, Nigeria — standing before the continent’s cashew industry as one of its leading scientific voices.

He was forty-something years old. He had more decades of work ahead of him.

II. The Crop He Chose, the Country He Served

Tanzania’s Cashew Economy — and What Was at Stake

To understand Dr. Majune’s significance, one must first understand the extraordinary range of what the cashew plant can produce — and how far Tanzania still is from capturing that range.

Most Tanzanians, and indeed most of the world, think of cashew as a snack. The reality is vastly more complex. The nut itself yields roasted and salted cashews, flavoured varieties, raw kernels, cashew splits and pieces for food manufacturing, and cashew flour increasingly used in health foods and baking. But these visible products represent only the beginning of what this plant offers.

Tanzania is Africa’s third largest cashew producer, ranking behind only Mozambique and Côte d’Ivoire on the continent. Cashew is the country’s most important agricultural export earner, generating income for over 2.5 million farmers — most of them smallholders in Mtwara, Lindi, Ruvuma, Pwani, and Tanga regions. For hundreds of thousands of households, the cashew season is not an economic event — it is the event. School fees, medical care, marriage ceremonies, roof repairs: all of it runs on cashew money.

TANZANIA’S CASHEW SECTOR AT A GLANCE (2025/2026) Africa ranking: 3rd largest producer (after Mozambique and Côte d’Ivoire) | Farmers dependent: 2.5 million+ | National production target (2025/26): 700,000 tonnes | Export revenue (2024/25): >TZS 1.8 trillion | Local processing (current): 10–15% of total crop | Government processing target by 2030: 60% | TARI Naliendele seed farm expansion: from 40 hectares to 363 hectares

And yet Tanzania exports the vast majority of its cashews as raw, unprocessed nuts, surrendering most of the value to processors in India and Vietnam who then sell finished products back to the world at three to four times the price. It is one of the most glaring value chain failures in East African agriculture. It was a failure that Dr. Dadili Japhet Majune understood viscerally, and dedicated his career to correcting — one variety, one trial, one trained extension officer at a time.

III. The Thesis That Came Before the Tenure

Circular Agronomy and the Cashew Apple Problem

Before Dr. Majune became the head of cashew breeding, he was a graduate researcher at NM-AIST wrestling with a problem most people in the cashew industry barely noticed: the cashew apple.

The cashew tree produces two things when it fruits: the raw cashew nut (RCN), which is the export commodity, and the cashew apple — the fleshy, juice-filled pseudo-fruit to which the nut is attached. The cashew apple represents nearly 90 percent of the total fruit weight of the tree. In Tanzania’s Southern Zone, virtually all of it rots in the orchard. It is agricultural waste on a massive scale — and it was a waste Majune found unconscionable, because he could see what it could become.

The cashew apple, pressed into juice, is nutritious and flavourful. Fermented, it yields wine — a tradition already alive at household level across Mtwara and Lindi. It can be preserved as jam, converted into vinegar, dried into snacks, or distilled into spirits. In Goa, India, a cashew apple spirit called feni has been produced and celebrated for centuries. Tanzania, which grows more cashews than Goa could dream of, largely lets its cashew apples fall and decompose. Cashew butter rivals peanut butter in taste and nutritional value. Cashew milk — whose emergence in Tanzania as a locally produced product Majune was able to witness — is a growing global dairy alternative. Cashew cheese, cashew cream, and cashew oil are all making inroads in health-conscious markets worldwide. Even the cashew tree’s timber is suitable for light construction, boat building, and charcoal production.

Dr. Majune’s Master’s thesis — ‘Influence of cashew apple utilisation on soil nutrient replenishment and performance of cashew seedlings’ — asked a simple, radical question: what if this waste were a resource? His research evaluated the incorporation of cashew apple biomass into soil media for nursery seedlings, examining its effects on soil organic matter, moisture retention, seedling growth rates, and transplanting vigour.

The findings were clear. Cashew apple biomass, properly incorporated, significantly enhanced seedling growth and improved soil parameters — all at a fraction of the cost of inorganic fertilisers, which are prohibitively expensive for smallholders in Mtwara and Lindi. His research addressed two chronic problems simultaneously: the shortage of affordable organic soil amendments in the Southern Zone, and the productive use of a biological resource that was being squandered at scale.

Parameter	Traditional Media	Cashew Apple Media	Outcome
Seedling Growth Rate	Standard	Significantly Enhanced	Faster maturation for transplanting
Soil Organic Matter	Baseline	High	Improved moisture retention
Seedling Vigour Index	Moderate	High	Higher field survival rates
Input Cost Ratio	High (fertiliser-dependent)	Low (waste-based)	Sustainable for smallholders

This systemic perspective — evaluating the entire biological output of the cashew tree rather than focusing only on the nut — became the philosophical signature of everything Dr. Majune did at TARI Naliendele. It is the thinking of a scientist trained to see the whole system, not just the commodity. And it anticipated, by years, the conversation Tanzania is only now beginning to have about valorising its cashew by-products at industrial scale.

IV. Breeding a Better Tree

The 1998 Hybridisation Programme and the Nachingwea Trials

The most tangible evidence of Dr. Majune’s scientific contribution lies in the 12-year evaluation trial he helped lead at Nachingwea — a body of work that culminated in a peer-reviewed publication in the East African Journal of Science, Technology and Innovation in early 2026, just weeks before his death.

The story begins in 1998, when TARI Naliendele’s plant breeders developed 58 strategic crosses, pairing cashew parent plants with contrasting but complementary traits: high yield, superior nut quality, disease resistance, and adaptation to different agro-ecological conditions. Twenty-six of these crosses were selected as elite hybrids for advanced genetic evaluation. They were assessed at the Naliendele station for seven years — from 1999 to 2006 — and then transplanted to Nachingwea, one of Tanzania’s most important cashew-growing districts in the Southern Zone, where the real-world test began.

For twelve years, Dr. Majune and his colleagues — including Joachim Paul Madeni, Dr. Fortunas Kapinga, and Prof. Peter Masawe, often described as the ‘father’ of cashew research in Tanzania — measured, recorded, and analysed. Every season, they tracked yield per tree, kernel weight, nut size, and resistance to disease. Their control was Anacardium ceylon 4 (AC4), the standard commercial variety grown by most Tanzanian farmers. Their mission: to prove their hybrids could outperform it.

The results did not disappoint.

Hybrid Group	Number	Performance vs. AC4 Control	Primary Enhancement
Elite Selections	26	Superior on combined metrics	Combined yield and nut quality
Nut Quality Leaders	23 of 26	Significant outperformance	Kernel weight and size vs AC4
High Yielders	13 of 26	Significant outperformance	Metric tonnes per hectare
Disease Tolerant	Majority	Significant outperformance	Resilience to CLNBD

Twenty-three of the twenty-six elite hybrids possessed superior nut and kernel weights compared to AC4. Thirteen delivered significantly higher yields per hectare. The majority demonstrated meaningful tolerance to Cashew Leaf and Nut Blight Disease. These were not marginal gains — they represented a generational upgrade in the genetic stock available to Tanzanian farmers.

But why does nut size matter so much? The answer lies in the processing facilities Tanzania is now building. Modern cashew decorticators — the automated machines that remove the shells and extract kernels — are calibrated for medium-to-large nuts. Small or irregularly shaped nuts cause high breakage rates, reducing the proportion of whole kernels and therefore the value of the processed product. By selecting for those physical traits over twelve years at Nachingwea, Dr. Majune was engineering the biological inputs for Tanzania’s industrial future.

“By selecting for large, uniform nuts over twelve years at Nachingwea, Dr. Majune was engineering the biological inputs for Tanzania’s future processing industry — trees planted today supplying the factories of 2030.”

V. Fighting the Invisible Enemies

Disease Research and the ‘Deadly Four’

A cashew tree that yields 20 kilograms per season is worthless if a fungal pathogen wipes out the crop before harvest. Dr. Majune understood this better than most. Alongside his breeding work, he devoted significant research energy to the phytopathological threats that have historically constrained the Tanzanian cashew sector — what researchers in the field sometimes call the ‘deadly four.’

Disease	Causal Agent	Impact If Uncontrolled	Management Strategy
Powdery Mildew (PMD)	Oidium anacardii Noack	70–100% crop loss	Sulphur dusting / Genetic resistance
Cashew Leaf & Nut Blight (CLNBD)	Cryptosporiopsis spp.	Up to 48.4% annual loss	Fungicides / Tolerant hybrids
Fusarium Wilt (CFWD)	Fusarium oxysporum	100% tree mortality	Soil management / Quarantine
Dieback Disease	Phomopsis anacardii	Significant shoot loss	Pruning / Fungicides

The 2018 Landmark Publication

In 2018, Majune, Prof. Peter Masawe, and Dr. Ernest Mbega published what became a defining reference in the field: ‘Status and Management of Cashew Disease in Tanzania,’ in the International Journal of Environment, Agriculture and Biotechnology. The paper surveyed the full landscape of cashew diseases — their distribution, their severity, their historical development, and the chemical and genetic strategies available to manage them.

The paper has since been cited in peer-reviewed studies from Kenya, Zambia, Burkina Faso, Brazil, and India. A finding reported in a field in Mtwara became a data point in the global scientific literature on cashew pathology. That is the reach of Dr. Majune’s work.

The Villagilisation Connection

One of the most penetrating insights in Majune’s disease research was historical and social, not merely botanical. He identified that the catastrophic spread of powdery mildew in Tanzania’s cashew sector during the 1970s was significantly exacerbated by the national villagilisation programme — the forced resettlement policy of the Ujamaa era — which led to the abandonment of managed orchards across the Southern Zone. Unmanaged trees, with their overlapping canopies and unrestricted growth, became reservoirs of fungal spores that spread to neighbouring farms.

This intersection of policy and pathology was characteristic of Majune’s thinking: he understood that agricultural science does not operate in a vacuum. Crop disease is not just a biological event — it is also a social and political one. Managing it requires both scientific and institutional responses.

CLNBD: Engineering Darkness Out of the Orchard

Majune’s most technically elegant work in disease management concerned the environmental conditions that allow Cashew Leaf and Nut Blight Disease (CLNBD), caused by Cryptosporiopsis spp., to thrive. First formally reported in Tanzania in 2003, CLNBD attacks cashew trees at all growth stages, causing angular leaf lesions, blackening of young nuts, and massive defoliation in severe infections.

Majune’s research demonstrated that the fungus requires specific periods of darkness and high relative humidity to develop and spread. This led to practical ‘cultural’ control recommendations: orchard spacing and pruning practices that increase light penetration into the canopy — cheap, chemical-free interventions accessible to smallholders without expensive fungicides. Simultaneously, his screening of the 1998 hybrids revealed that several elite lines possessed natural tolerance to CLNBD, providing a long-term genetic solution to a problem that had previously required intensive chemical management.

VI. From Laboratory to Farm Gate

What the Numbers Say About His Impact

The ultimate measure of agricultural research is not citation counts but harvest weights — not papers published, but incomes earned. A 2025 study published in the African Journal of Agricultural Research provided one of the most vivid quantifications of the impact of the improved cashew varieties that Dr. Majune’s section developed and distributed.

Using Propensity Score Matching — a statistical technique that controls for selection bias by comparing similar farmers who adopted versus did not adopt improved varieties — the study examined 760 cashew farmers in the Mtwara region. The results were striking.

Economic Metric	Non-Adopters (Traditional Varieties)	Adopters (ICVs from TARI Naliendele)	Increase
Average Yield (kg/ha)	574.3	1,097.4	+91.2%
Annual Income (TZS)	1,536,570	2,844,810	+85.1%
Annual Income (USD)	$624.63	$1,137.92	+85.1%

A 91.2 percent increase in yield. An 85.1 percent increase in annual income. These are not incremental improvements — they are transformative shifts in the economic lives of rural families. Extrapolated across the hundreds of thousands of farmers in Tanzania’s cashew belt who have adopted TARI Naliendele’s improved varieties, the aggregate impact runs into billions of shillings in additional household income each season.

The study also identified a troubling ‘gender gain gap’: male-headed households achieved yield increases of 617.9 kg/ha compared to 374.7 kg/ha for female-headed households — partly attributed to differential access to credit, training, and extension services. Dr. Majune and the TARI Naliendele leadership took this finding seriously, refining their extension strategies to ensure women farmers had equal access to the knowledge and support required to benefit fully from the research.

“A 91.2 percent increase in yield. An 85.1 percent increase in annual income. These are not incremental improvements — they are transformative shifts in the economic lives of rural families.”

VII. The Teacher in the Field

Extension, Training, and Building a Better Tomorrow

Dr. Majune was not a scientist who believed that publishing a paper and returning to the laboratory constituted a complete contribution. His philosophy — shared with the broader leadership at TARI Naliendele — was that elite seeds are only as good as the knowledge of the farmers who plant them.

In June 2025, TARI Naliendele, in collaboration with the Cashewnut Board of Tanzania (CBT), launched a strategic training programme for agricultural extension officers in Masasi District. The programme focused on building expertise in pest identification, disease recognition and management, and the correct use of protective equipment when handling chemical inputs — creating a cascade effect of knowledge reaching farmers across the Southern Zone.

At the institutional level, June 2025 also saw TARI Naliendele host the second session of the 20th Cashew Master Training Programme (MTP) — a historic milestone: the first session of the MTP to take place entirely in East Africa. Fifty-eight participants from eight countries — Burundi, Kenya, Mozambique, Rwanda, South Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia — attended sessions that included practical demonstrations on Dr. Majune’s research plots at Naliendele, observing improved planting materials, pest and disease management techniques, and Good Agricultural Practice (GAP) in action.

These participants returned to their countries carrying knowledge rooted in the trials Majune had spent fifteen years conducting.

VIII. A Voice for Africa’s Cashew

The 2022 ACA Conference in Abuja

In September 2022, Dr. Dadili Majune travelled to Abuja, Nigeria, to address the 16th Annual Cashew Conference and Expo of the African Cashew Alliance — the first in-person ACA conference after two years of COVID-19 disruption. The conference gathered cashew producers, processors, traders, researchers, and policymakers from across Africa and internationally, under the theme ‘Strengthening Sustainable Kernel and By-Product Marketing in the African Cashew Industry.’

Majune was listed as an expert contributor in the official programme, profiled alongside regional industry leaders. For a scientist who did his daily work in the relative obscurity of a research station in Mtwara — far from the capital, far from the conferences and headline platforms — it was meaningful recognition of his standing in the continental cashew community. He carried Tanzania’s science to that room. The profile described him as an international consultant in the cashew value chain, with consultancies conducted across Africa.

IX. Institutional Partnerships and Global Reach

China, IITA, and the Science Diplomacy of Cashew

Dr. Majune’s work was embedded within a TARI Naliendele that was, under Director General Dr. Thomas Bwana, expanding its global institutional footprint. In 2024, TARI signed a five-year Memorandum of Understanding with the Chinese Academy of Tropical Agricultural Science (CATAS) — a partnership aimed at enhancing research capacity in seed production, value addition, and laboratory infrastructure. As Head of the Cashew Breeding Section, Majune was a central technical figure in this MoU, which included provisions for the exchange of research information on cashew and cassava — crops where China has developed advanced value-addition technologies.

He was also part of TARI’s reinforced collaboration with the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA). During visits from IITA’s Eastern Africa leadership, discussions encompassed genetic innovation, disease management for strategic crops, and the management of invasive pathogens — including Fusarium Tropical Race 4, where Majune’s expertise in systemic fungal diseases made him a valuable contributor beyond his primary cashew mandate.

X. The Economic Moment He Leaves Behind

Tanzania’s Cashew at a Crossroads — and What Remains to Be Done

Dr. Majune’s death arrives at a pivotal and pressured moment for the sector he served. Tanzania is targeting 700,000 tonnes of cashew production in the 2025/2026 season — a 32.5 percent increase on the previous season. The government has committed to a 60 percent local processing target by 2030, supported by new processing infrastructure, favourable export policies, and the auctioning of cashews through the Tanzania Mercantile Exchange (TMX) — a new price discovery mechanism that creates direct market incentives for quality.

Under this system, the quality of the nut matters more than ever. TMX auctions mean that variations in nut size, kernel outturn ratio (KOR), and moisture content are immediately reflected in prices. The spread between top-grade and lower-grade lots widens in difficult seasons. Dr. Majune’s decade-plus of breeding work — selecting for consistent nut quality across different agro-ecological zones — was a direct, strategic response to exactly this kind of market pressure.

But Majune’s vision extended well beyond the nut. He saw the full industrial range of what this crop could produce, and he was clear-eyed about the distance between where Tanzania stands today and where it could be.

Consider Cashew Nut Shell Liquid — CNSL — one of the most industrially valuable agricultural by-products in the world, largely unknown outside specialist circles. From CNSL come brake linings and brake pads, clutch facings for the automotive industry, industrial varnishes and paints, waterproof coatings, wood preservatives, insecticides and pesticides, resins and polymers, and foundry chemicals used in metal casting. Every time a vehicle brakes safely on a Tanzanian road, there is a chance that cashew chemistry played a role. Just not Tanzanian cashew chemistry. That is the gap Majune spent his career trying to close.

Cashew oil has a growing place in cosmetics — appearing in skin moisturisers, hair care products, anti-ageing creams, and massage oils. Cashew butter and cashew milk are growing global dairy and food alternatives. The cashew apple — virtually all of which currently rots in Tanzania’s orchards — can yield juice, wine, vinegar, dried snacks, and spirits that command premium prices in international markets.

THE CASHEW PLANT: WHAT IT CAN PRODUCE FROM THE NUT: Roasted and salted cashews; flavoured varieties (chilli, honey, smoked); raw kernels; cashew splits and pieces for food manufacturing; cashew flour and powder; cashew butter; cashew milk; cashew cheese and cream; cashew oil (food and cosmetic).  FROM THE SHELL (CNSL): Brake linings and clutch facings; industrial varnishes and paints; waterproof coatings; wood preservatives; insecticides and pesticides; resins and polymers; foundry chemicals.  FROM THE APPLE: Juice; wine and spirits (including feni-style distillates); jam and preserves; vinegar; dried snacks.  FROM THE TREE: Timber for light construction and boat building; charcoal.

Tanzania currently exports 85 to 90 percent of its cashews as raw, unprocessed nuts — mostly to Vietnam and India, where the value-addition work happens, and where the premium profits are captured. Some progress has been made. Roasted and packaged cashews are increasingly available for local and export markets. Cashew wine is produced at household and small enterprise level across the southern regions. CNSL extraction, while still limited, is a growing area of industrial interest. The government, supported by development partners including AGCOT Centre, has pushed consistently for greater in-country processing.

But the distance between where Tanzania is and where it could be remains vast. Majune’s vision was not utopian — it was practical. He saw a crop that could anchor an industrial economy in southern Tanzania, generating employment not just on the farm but in processing plants, packaging facilities, cosmetics workshops, automotive supply chains, and beverage enterprises. He saw communities that grew cashews becoming communities that manufactured with cashews.

Sector Metric	Current Status	Significance
Production Target (2025/26)	700,000 tonnes	32.5% increase from previous season
Export Revenue (2024/25)	>TZS 1.8 trillion	Major national GDP contributor
Raw Export Share	85–90%	Mostly to Vietnam and India
Local Processing Target	60% by 2030	Requires large-nut, high-KOR varieties
Cashew Apple Utilisation	<5% of total fruit weight	Tanzania’s greatest agro-industrial gap

XI. The Colleagues He Leaves Behind

Mentorship, Collaboration, and the Next Generation

Science is not made by individuals. Dr. Majune’s bibliography is itself a map of the collaborative culture at TARI Naliendele: his papers are co-authored with Prof. Peter Masawe, Dr. Ernest Mbega, Dr. Fortunas Kapinga, Dr. Wilson Nene, and Joachim Paul Madeni — a community of researchers who built on each other’s work across decades.

At NM-AIST, where Majune completed his Master’s degree, colleagues acknowledged his characteristic enthusiasm and willingness to assist fellow researchers during their studies. Dr. Wilson Nene, in published acknowledgements, noted that much of the progress in crop protection research at Naliendele would have been ‘impossible’ without Majune’s practical support. This was not a man who guarded his knowledge — he distributed it.

That mentorship culture is, perhaps, the most durable part of his legacy. The researchers he trained, the extension officers he equipped, the graduate students who passed through Naliendele’s research plots and absorbed his methods — they carry the approach forward. Institutions can survive the loss of brilliant individuals if those individuals invested in transmission. Dr. Majune invested in transmission.

XII. A Bibliography in Service of the Soil

Selected Published Works

The following represents a selection of Dr. Majune’s published contributions to the scientific literature:

1.  Majune, D.J., Kapinga, F., Ngamba, Z.S., & Masawe, P.A.L. (2026). Evaluation of elite cashew hybrids developed in 1998 under the agro-ecological conditions of Nachingwea in Southern Tanzania. East African Journal of Science, Technology and Innovation.

2.  Majune, D.J., Masawe, P.A., & Mbega, E.R. (2018). Status and Management of Cashew Disease in Tanzania. International Journal of Environment, Agriculture and Biotechnology, 3(5).

3.  Majune, D.J., Masawe, P.A., & Mbega, E.R. (2018). Effect of environmental conditions on the growth of Cryptosporiopsis spp. causing leaf and nut blight on cashew (Anacardium occidentale Linn.).

4.  Majune, D.J. (2018). Diseases and Insect Pests of Cashew in Tanzania. [Research chapter]

5.  Majune, D.J. (2019). Influence of cashew apple utilisation on soil nutrient replenishment and performance of cashew seedlings. [MSc Thesis, NM-AIST, Arusha]

6.  Co-author, First Report of Red Rust Disease caused by Cephaleuros virescens on Mango (Mangifera indica) Tree in Cameroon. ResearchGate.

7.  Various co-authored technical bulletins and extension materials, TARI Naliendele Cashew Research Programme, 2010–2026.

XIII. The Grade Was Well Earned

The official death notice from TARI described Dr. Dadili Japhet Majune as a Mtafiti Daraja la Kwanza (I) — a First Grade Researcher. It is a designation that requires years of consistent, peer-reviewed, institutionally recognised contribution to achieve. It is not given lightly in Tanzania’s national agricultural research system.

But the most meaningful grade of his work cannot be read in any official classification. It is read in the orchards of Mtwara, where trees planted with improved seeds yield twice what their predecessors did. It is read in the soil media of nurseries, enriched with cashew apple biomass that once rotted as waste. It is read in the disease tolerance of hybrid trees that resist pathogens their ancestors succumbed to. It is read in the increased incomes of hundreds of thousands of smallholders who will never know his name.

The cashew trees of Tanzania’s Southern Zone do not know who bred them. But they carry, in their genetics and in their resistance and in their yield, the patient, rigorous, fifteen-year labour of Dr. Dadili Japhet Majune.

XIV. A Vision Ahead of Its Time

There are people who see what others cannot yet see. Dadili Japhet Majune was one of them.

Long before Tanzania’s cashew sector became a subject of policy debates, investment forums, and development conferences, Majune understood something that most agronomists, traders, and policymakers were still working out: that the cashew nut was not merely a crop, but an entire industry waiting to be born. A food industry, a cosmetics industry, an automotive supply chain, a beverage sector, a nutraceutical market, a soil amendment system — all of it dormant in the biology of one tree growing in abundance across the red soils of southern Tanzania.

He did not carry that vision as an abstraction. He embodied it in his research. His Master’s thesis on cashew apple utilisation was not just a soil science paper — it was a proof of concept for the circular economy he wanted his country to build. His breeding work on elite hybrids was not just about yield per tree — it was about producing the quality of nut that Tanzania’s future processing factories would need to be profitable and competitive. His disease management research was not just about defending the current crop — it was about protecting a resource whose full value had yet to be extracted.

“He saw a crop that could anchor an industrial economy in southern Tanzania — communities that grew cashews becoming communities that manufactured with cashews.”

The vision Majune held was not utopian. It was practical, it was patient, and it was grounded in fifteen years of evidence gathered from fields, nurseries, and laboratories in Mtwara. He saw communities that grew cashews becoming communities that manufactured with cashews — that pressed their apples into juice and wine, that extracted their shell liquid for brake linings and waterproof coatings, that produced butters and milks and cosmetics oils that could compete in global markets, that owned more of the value chain that their land and their labour had always generated.

Some of what he envisioned is beginning to materialise. Cashew milk has emerged as a locally produced product in Tanzania. Packaged and roasted cashews are finding export markets. The government has committed — at least in policy — to 60 percent local processing by 2030. The industrial park at Maranje is being developed. The Tanzania Mercantile Exchange is creating quality incentives that reward the kind of high-grade nut Majune spent twelve years selecting for at Nachingwea.

But the cashew apple still largely rots. CNSL is still barely extracted at scale. Cashew spirits, cashew butter, cashew cosmetics — these remain marginal or absent from Tanzania’s formal economy. The distance between what this crop is and what it could become remains vast. Dr. Majune saw that distance more clearly than almost anyone. He spent his career trying to close it.

The greatest tribute Tanzania can pay to those who, like Dr. Dadili Japhet Majune, gave their intellectual energy and their professional lives to the cashew question, is to finally honour the fullness of that vision. To not settle for being a raw material exporter when the science, the land, the labour, and the opportunity exist to be something far more. To not let the cashew apple rot when it could be a bottle of wine, a jar of vinegar, a market stall, a livelihood.

The knowledge exists. The crop exists. The market exists. The science — so much of it built by a quiet, rigorous man in Mtwara — exists.

What remains is the will to act.

“Bwana ametoa na Bwana ametwaa, jina la Bwana Lihimidiwe.” The Lord gave and the Lord has taken; blessed be the name of the Lord. — TARI Director General Dr. Thomas Bwana, April 3, 2026

SOURCES & ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This feature draws on peer-reviewed publications co-authored by Dr. Majune and available on ResearchGate and EAJSTI; his official profile in the 16th ACA Annual Cashew Conference Programme (Abuja, 2022); the TARI official death announcement by Director General Dr. Thomas Bwana; the Google Gemini Deep Research report compiled April 4, 2026; publications in the African Journal of Agricultural Research, AllAfrica, African Agribusiness, and the African Cashew Alliance; and the NM-AIST institutional research repository. All statistical data on sector performance sourced from the Tanzania Cashewnut Board (CBT), TARI, and the African Cashew Alliance.

Published by Kilimokwanza.org -Agricultural Journalism for Africa