Five years into President Samia Suluhu Hassan’s administration, Tanzania’s agriculture sector tells a story almost entirely in numbers — and the numbers are unusually clean. This is the running scorecard.

Food production up 38.69%. Cash crops up 64%. Local fertilizer up 282%. Improved seed availability up 77.68%. Agricultural exports up from USD 2.1 billion to USD 3.73 billion. Storage capacity up 209%. The Awamu ya Sita period in Tanzanian agriculture has produced a five-year scorecard of unusual coherence. This is the comprehensive read.

The headline transformation

Five years ago, in the 2020/2021 cropping season, Tanzania produced 17.15 million tons of food crops. In 2024/2025, the country produced 23.78 million tons. The 38.69% increase is the single most consequential statistic in the FY 2026/2027 Hotuba, because almost everything else flows from it. With food self-sufficiency now at 130%, Tanzania has moved from a country that worried about feeding itself to one that has structural surpluses to export and to store.

The cash-crop story is even more dramatic in percentage terms. From 973,436 tons of traditional cash crops (cotton, sugar, coffee, cashew, tobacco, tea, sisal, pyrethrum, cocoa) in 2020/2021 to 1,596,311 tons in the most recent reporting cycle — a 64% increase. Horticulture rose 33.9%, oilseeds rose 31.22%. Across the major aggregations of agricultural output, the trend is consistent: more produced, on more land, by more farmers, channelled through more cooperatives.

Why production grew

The Hotuba is unusually explicit about the input side of this expansion. Tanzania now has 1.099 million tons of fertilizer available annually — up from 678,017 tons five years ago, a 62.09% increase. More striking, the share of that fertilizer produced inside Tanzania has climbed from 32,239 tons (about 5% of supply) to 123,203 tons (roughly 11%) — a 282.16% increase in domestic production. The country is still a net fertilizer importer, but the trajectory of import substitution is unmistakable, and the input subsidy programme delivered through e-Kilimo has been the demand-side anchor of that growth.

Improved seed availability has followed a similar arc. Total improved seed available to farmers has grown from 44,581 tons in 2020/2021 to 79,214 tons in 2025/2026 — a 77.68% increase. Local production has grown faster: from 30,167 tons to 54,750 tons, an 81.49% increase. Where the country once relied heavily on imported certified seed, it is now producing roughly 69% of its own. Behind the figures sit 56 active strategic seed-research programmes at TARI and a pipeline of regional seed laboratories — Tabora, Mtwara, Mwanza — under construction.

Storage has moved in parallel. The National Food Reserve Agency (NFRA) had a storage capacity of 251,000 tons in 2020/2021. By the close of FY 2025/2026, the figure stands at 776,000 tons — a 209.16% increase. The construction pipeline reported in this year’s Hotuba will push the figure toward 861,000 tons; the 2030 target is 3 million tons. Storage matters because it stabilises prices, smooths between-season volatility, and gives Tanzania the ability to play in regional and continental food security responses without compromising domestic supply.

The export story

Agricultural exports moved from USD 2.1 billion in 2021/2022 to USD 3.73 billion in 2024/2025 — a 77% increase in three reporting years. The Vision 2030 target is USD 5 billion. At current trajectory, Tanzania is ahead of pace on this indicator, which is unusual; most national export targets remain laggards through their delivery period. The 2030 finish line, four years out, no longer looks aspirational.

Composition of those exports is shifting. Avocado, which barely figured in the export ledger five years ago, has emerged as a flagship growth crop — 37,871 tons exported in 2024/25 against a target of 40,000 tons. Horticulture exports more broadly have benefited from a quietly upgraded TPHPA laboratory that now holds international accreditation, allowing certified produce to travel into more demanding markets. Cashew remains the structural anchor at 617,684 tons of production in 2025/26 — 88% of target.

Where the gaps remain

A scorecard read honestly has to register where Tanzania has fallen short of stated targets. The Hotuba does not avoid this.

Cotton came in at 222,014 tons against a target of 400,000 tons — 56% of plan. Sugar reached 410,979 tons against a 700,000-ton target — 59%. Cocoa at 10,096 tons remains a small share of the global market. Tobacco at 185,776 tons against a 200,000-ton target performed at 93%, and coffee at 74,664 tons against 85,000 tons performed at 88% — both are within the band of conventional under-performance, but neither is at full delivery.

Cotton in particular illustrates the pattern. The crop has been the subject of structural reforms reported in successive Hotuba speeches: ginnery revival at Mhunze and Uzogole, an industrial park (kongani) planned for Simiyu Region, electricity-subsidy negotiations with the Ministry of Energy, a partnership with Medical Stores Department for hospital-grade cotton manufacturing. Each of these is the right kind of intervention. Production has not yet responded at scale. The lag between policy reform and crop response is, in cotton, measured in seasons rather than months.

The other genuine gap is the agricultural sector growth rate. Tanzania’s agriculture grew 4.1% in 2024 against a 2030 target of 10% annual growth. The sector has moved from 3.9% in 2021 to 4.1% in 2024 — directional progress, but at a pace that does not compound to 10% on the current trajectory. Either the trajectory needs to steepen sharply in the coming three years, or the 10% target needs to be re-examined.

The institutional infrastructure

Behind the production numbers sits an institutional rebuild that has been quieter and more consequential than any single output statistic. The Tanzania Agricultural Research Institute (TARI) has consolidated as a genuine research powerhouse, with 56 strategic seed-research programmes in motion, 54 climate-resilient varieties released across mungbean, beans, vegetables, rice, groundnuts, sorghum and cassava, and a Centre of Excellence at Hombolo for dryland agriculture. TOSCI has refurbished the National Seed Laboratory and is building three new regional laboratories. TPHPA has secured international accreditation.

The cooperative system has grown from 4,661 registered cooperatives in 2022/23 to 6,545 in 2025/26, with 3.36 million members. AMCOS sales have more than doubled. SACCOS assets are up 75%. The TCDC public dashboard at csmis.ushirika.go.tz makes the cooperative system one of the most data-transparent regulated sectors in the country.

And the digital backbone — e-Kilimo, MUVU, the integrations with TFRA, TMA, NIDA, mGov, TRA, TANCIS, BRELA, GePG and HCMIS — has been built mostly out of public attention but is the architecture that makes everything else faster, more transparent, and more measurable.

“Katika Awamu ya Sita tumeshuhudia ongezeko kubwa la bajeti ya Wizara ya Kilimo kutoka Shilingi Bilioni 294 mwaka 2021/2022 hadi Shilingi Trilioni 1.19 mwaka 2025/2026 ikiwa ni ishara tosha kuwa kilimo si ajenda ya pembeni bali ni kipaumbele namba moja cha Taifa.”

— Hon. Daniel Godfrey Chongolo (MB), Waziri wa Kilimo, Hotuba ya Bajeti FY 2026/2027 (§24)

How to read this scorecard

Read carefully, the Awamu ya Sita scorecard is not a celebration of complete delivery. It is a record of large structural gains, several genuine gaps, and an institutional rebuild that positions the next half-decade as the consolidation period. The strongest indicators — food production, fertilizer manufacture, seed availability, storage, exports — show the kind of compound trajectory that is hard to reverse. The weaker indicators — cotton volumes, sector growth rate, cocoa scale — show where focused intervention will be required if 2030 targets are to be met.

The framing matters because it determines what comes next. A scorecard read as a victory lap risks the next five years drifting on the assumption that momentum is self-sustaining. A scorecard read as a halfway audit produces a different agenda — one focused on closing the specific gaps, accelerating the slower indicators, and preserving the institutional gains that delivered the strong ones.

The FY 2026/2027 budget speech reads more like the second framing than the first. That is the right framing.