At the opening of HortiLogistica Africa 2026, the Vice President set out the size of the prize, admitted the losses holding farmers back, and ordered Arusha’s idle flower farms back into production.
ARUSHA, 9 November 2026. The speech had the ceremony expected of an official opening: thanks, protocol and congratulations. But Vice President Deogratius John Ndejembi used his address at the launch of HortiLogistica Africa 2026 to say things governments do not often say in public.
Tanzania grows more fruit than ever, he said, and loses too much of it. Government sometimes works “behind closed doors” when it should work with the private sector. And when Arusha’s flower farms came back into state hands, the first instinct was to cut them into plots.
“As much as we congratulate ourselves, we still have a great deal of work to do,” he told delegates from 45 countries at the Friedkin Recreation Centre.
It was one of his first major policy speeches on agriculture since he took office. He took the oath of office as Vice-President of the United Republic of Tanzania at Chamwino State House in Dodoma on August 29, 2026. All 324 lawmakers who took part in the vote backed Mr Ndejembi, with no votes cast against his nomination. Before that, he had served in Government, most recently as Energy Minister, and represents Chamwino in Parliament. thecitizentheeastafrican
A Personal Debt to TAHA
He opened with a personal story, not statistics.
More than a decade ago, he said, he was a sales and marketing manager for a Dar es Salaam telecommunications company. His Arusha team took him to see a prospective client: an office on Mahakama Road, behind a gate with tight security.
“In that office people were very busy,” he recalled. “You would hear phones: ‘the consignment is at Usa River, the plane lands at nine o’clock at night, the cargo must leave.’”
On the sofas he found green brochures showing flowers and greenhouses. Staff explained that they coordinated farms in Usa River, Moshi and Arusha, linking growers to markets. Vehicles in the yard carried donor-funded project plates. It was the Tanzania Horticultural Association (TAHA).
“The TAHA I found on Mahakama Road at that time is not the TAHA of today,” he said. He noted that the association has since expanded its offices and now operates in both Mainland Tanzania and Zanzibar.
“TAHA is the reason we stand here today, proud, or as the people of the coast say, tunajifaragua, that we have HortiLogistica Africa 2026. It is because of the hard work TAHA has put into growing horticulture across Tanzania.”
He went further, telling TAHA that the Government “has no choice but to give you every cooperation, so that you bring more honour like you have brought today, connecting us with more than 45 countries”.
The Size of the Prize
The Vice President then turned to the numbers, and they framed the rest of his argument.
Africa, he said, is a market of about 1.5 billion people. Its demand for fruit, vegetables and spices is growing with urbanisation, rising populations, changing diets and the search for more nutritious food. The continent’s horticultural exports rose from USD 15.4 billion in 2015 to USD 28.6 billion in 2025.
Yet Africa still accounts for only about 6 per cent of world fruit trade and 17 per cent of vegetable trade. “This share remains small because we are still not producing what the final consumer in those markets needs,” he said.
Global fruit and vegetable imports alone reached about USD 379.45 billion in 2024. The biggest buyers are the United States, Germany, China, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. Kenya, Ethiopia and Rwanda, he noted, are already performing well in that trade.
Tanzania’s record shows momentum:
- horticulture is growing at an average of 9 to 12 per cent a year;
- national production rose by 15.9 per cent, from 8.44 million tonnes in 2022/23 to 9.78 million tonnes in 2024/25;
- horticultural export earnings almost doubled, from USD 290.7 million in 2020 to USD 569 million in 2024;
- avocado production, the crop he called “green gold”, rose by 36.2 per cent, from 149,340 tonnes in 2020/21 to 203,473 tonnes in 2025/26;
- avocado exports reached 52,593.72 tonnes, worth TZS 255.4 billion.
He also pointed to demand at home. Arusha’s growing number of hotels and international conferences, he said, means horticultural produce is “very much needed, even here inside the country”.
The Pineapples at Msata
Then came the passage that set the speech apart.
He described driving through Msata during pineapple season. Fruit was on sale at every corner, and much of it was rotting where it was sold.
“It means we produce a lot. Our farmers give their all. But we lose the crop we produce,” he said. He described the roadside sellers who cut a slice for passing drivers to taste. Often, he said, the slice is offered only because the fruit is about to spoil anyway.
“I have only given the example of pineapples. Go to Njombe to the avocados and the challenge is the same. Go to Mbeya, Manyara and elsewhere: the challenge is the same. We have a great deal of work to do.”
He applied the same candour to the Government’s own flagship intervention, subsidised avocado seedlings. He credited President Dr Samia Suluhu Hassan for finding the money and the Ministry of Agriculture for delivering it. But he said the real test is how many subsidised trees go on to produce fruit that the market wants. “It would not be surprising to find that a full 40 per cent has been lost,” he said.
His conclusion was blunt. Growth, he said, would have been greater if government had stopped “working behind closed doors” (kujifungia) and worked with the private sector instead.
His example was a young exhibitor, Mr Onakado, whom he had met at a stand earlier that day. “Onakado has never been held by the hand or given a subsidised seedling,” he said. “But by working with TAHA, he managed to get an export market and began to produce the quantity required, to the standards required by the export market.”
He said the subsidised seedlings must also reach the people they are meant for, “especially young people and women”.
“Bring Back the Roses”
The most pointed passage of the speech concerned Arusha’s cut-flower industry.
The region, he recalled, once had farms with infrastructure built for export, sending roses to international markets every day. When some of those farms were returned to government, “the first thing we thought of doing was to cut plots”.
“I recognise that cities grow. We need housing. We need to plan and survey land,” he said. “But after those farms came back, we carved out plots and forgot the infrastructure that was there. We did not say, let us find TAHA, let us find stakeholders who can invest in these farms so we continue producing and exporting roses. We did not do that. As usual, we closed ourselves in, and all we saw was housing.”
The result, he said, was that “today, if I want to buy my wife flowers on Valentine’s Day, the flowers are imported”. He added: “Today our neighbours beat us in exporting roses, yet we had the infrastructure and everything.”
He then gave a direct instruction to the Minister of Agriculture: the farms that remain “should return to the work they were doing before”, producing roses for the international market. He said young people in Arusha want access to that land. He asked the Parliamentary Committee present to follow up when the Ministry next appears before it.
“Today we are bringing together 45 countries here,” he said. “If we had roses, we would be signing contracts right here to export.”
The scale of what was lost is on record. Official data shows the redundant flower estates were earning Tanzania $24.5 million annually in export value, creating 4,010 jobs directly and 40,000 others indirectly. In 2020, the government said it was seeking new investors for eight premium horticultural farms in Arusha that it had repossessed. The Vice President’s remarks suggest that, six years on, much of that ambition remains unrealised. thecitizenthecitizen
Ms Mariam Ditopile, Vice Chairperson of the Parliamentary Committee on Industry, Trade, Agriculture and Livestock, told the audience that the committee had taken note. Reviving rose farming in Arusha, she said, was one of two issues it would pursue.
Standards First, Then Markets
The Vice President’s second theme was that Tanzania must understand what buyers want before it can sell to them.
He said government must go to the markets themselves, the European Union and the United States, with TAHA, to identify the standards required. Those standards must then be brought back to farmers, so that what a grower harvests matches what the market demands. Only then, he said, does investment in storage and in cutting post-harvest losses pay off.
According to the Daily News, he directed the Tanzania Trade Development Authority (TanTrade), alongside the ministries responsible for Agriculture, Industry and Trade, and Investment, to study major international markets, particularly the European Union (EU) and the United States, and identify requirements for accessing them. dailynews
He said the Government is following procedures to open new markets for Tanzanian produce in 14 countries. It is also training farmers and other stakeholders on quality, standards and international trade procedures.
But he warned against looking only overseas. “Africa should not look only to the markets of Europe, Asia and the Middle East,” he said. He urged producers to make greater use of the East African Community, the Southern African Development Community and the African Continental Free Trade Area.
What Government Will Do, and What It Wants from Investors
He set out the Government’s side of the bargain. It will improve the business and investment environment so that Tanzanian produce can compete at home and abroad. It will promote modern, market-led farming. And it recognises the private sector’s role in investment, production, processing, marketing and services.
He also named what makes trade work: production and purchase contracts between farmers and buyers, farmer groups and cooperatives, and strict attention to quality, food safety, plant health, traceability and certification.
His invitation to investors was specific:
- inputs and improved technology;
- aggregation centres;
- storage and cold-chain infrastructure;
- processing;
- quality and safety certification services;
- transport and access to domestic and export markets.
Tanzania, he said, has the land to deliver: fertile soils, varied ecological zones, water sources and seasons that allow different crops to be grown at different times of the year. That means avocados, mangoes, oranges, pineapples, bananas, vegetables, flowers and spices for domestic, regional and international markets.
“Next Year It Will Be Far Bigger”
He declared HortiLogistica Africa 2026 officially open and ended with a forecast.
“If this is the beginning, the first event, with 45 countries and preparations like these,” he said, “it is my belief that if we work well together, government, TAHA and development partners, next year it will be far bigger than what we see now.”
Africa, he said, must stop being “only a market for other people’s goods” and become an important producer and supplier of horticultural produce to the world.
What to Watch
The speech leaves a set of public commitments against which progress can be measured:
- Rose farms: whether the remaining state-held flower farms in Arusha return to production, and whether Parliament follows up as promised.
- Market standards: whether the study of EU and US market requirements is completed and reaches farmers in a form they can use.
- New markets: progress on the 14 export markets the Government says it is opening.
- Seedling survival: whether subsidised avocado seedlings are tracked through to market-grade harvests, and whether they reach young people and women.
- Post-harvest losses: whether investment in storage, aggregation and cold chains reaches places like Msata, Njombe and Mbeya, where fruit is still lost before it can be sold.
The Vice President was clear that the platform alone is not the achievement. “As much as we congratulate ourselves,” he said, the work that remains is to turn what Tanzania grows into what the world buys.
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