In one sweeping decision, an Africa country is tackling toxic agriculture in ways the wealthy world has only talked about. But the real test comes now—can it pull off the transition?
By January 7, 2026, most of the world wasn’t watching when Prof. Joseph Ndunguru, Director General of Tanzania’s Plant Health and Pesticides Authority, affixed his signature to a document that would reshape agricultural markets across East Africa and send tremors through the pesticide industry globally.
The announcement was formal, technical, bureaucratic in tone. The kind of regulatory notice that passes unremarked through agricultural ministries worldwide.
But what Tanzania had just done—quietly, methodically, without the fanfare or international negotiation that typically precedes such decisions—was extraordinary: it had withdrawn over 800 pesticide products from its market. Not gradually. Not with exemptions or transition periods. Not after years of stakeholder consultation and pilot programs.
It had simply decided that a category of chemicals too toxic for farmers to survive was no longer acceptable in its food system.
In doing so, Tanzania did not just regulate pesticides. It challenged a global architecture of agricultural toxicity that has persisted for decades, one that allows chemicals banned in Europe and America to flow freely through markets where farmers—mostly women, mostly poor, mostly unprotected—absorb the human cost.
The world is only beginning to understand what that act of defiance means.
The Moment the Chemistry Changed
Walk through the Kariakoo market in Dar es Salaam on any given morning, and you will see dozens of wooden stalls displaying pyramids of vegetables under merciless equatorial sun. Tomatoes. Peppers. Onions. Cabbages. This is where perhaps 40% of the capital’s fresh produce originates—a market that directly feeds over 600,000 people and indirectly supplies thousands of small restaurants, street vendors, and households across one of East Africa’s largest cities.
What you cannot see, but what testing has repeatedly confirmed, is that at least half of those vegetables carry pesticide residues that would trigger immediate regulatory action in the United States or European Union.
A 2023 unpublished survey of Kariakoo vegetables found carbendazim—a benzimidazole fungicide linked to genetic mutations and reproductive toxicity—in 48% of tomato samples. Some residues exceeded Tanzania’s own Maximum Residue Limits (MRLs) by 300%. In 2022, Tanzanian beans exported to Belgium were rejected three times in eight months due to carbendazim contamination—a loss of approximately $380,000 in export revenue for small-scale growers.
This is not incidental contamination. It is industrial-scale chemical exposure masquerading as agriculture.
For decades, Tanzanian farmers have had little choice. The pesticides sprayed on their crops were legal, cheap, and ubiquitous. They moved freely through a supply chain that stretched from Indian and Chinese manufacturing facilities to Tanzanian ports to retail stalls in rural trading centers. Farmers knew these products by their trade names—Bavistin, Daconil, Swing, Tilt, Jazz—not by their true toxicological identities.
Neither did most of the regulators overseeing them.
Then, in the final week of 2025, TPHPA convened its scientific committees for a comprehensive review. What emerged from that process was not a list of prohibited substances, but a devastating audit of regulatory failure: 675 pesticide products had been circulating without valid registration renewals for more than a decade. Another 130 products, carefully evaluated against FAO/WHO toxicological criteria, met the international definition of Highly Hazardous Pesticides (HHPs)—substances that should have been phased out years ago.
When TPHPA released its findings in early January 2026, it wasn’t presenting a vision of a better agricultural future.
It was presenting an indictment of the present.
The Chemistry of Harm
To understand why Tanzania’s action matters, you need to understand what these pesticides actually do to human bodies.
The 130 highly hazardous products withdrawn in Table 1 don’t fail on technicalities. They fail because their molecular structures interfere with fundamental human biology in ways that cannot be fully undone.
Carbendazim is among the most prevalent. This benzimidazole fungicide is the active ingredient in 28 different trade-name products across Tanzania’s agricultural market—products with names like Jazz 40% WP, Bavistin 500 DF, Elcazim 50SC, Pearl 500 SC, and Tandem 250 SC. Farmers use it on almost everything: cereals, vegetables, fruit trees, pulses, and coffee. It is cheap, effective, and has been the backbone of fungal disease management in tropical agriculture for 40 years.
It is also, according to the FAO/WHO JMPM criteria, a reproductive toxicant.
Laboratory studies show carbendazim damages sperm quality, reduces fertility, and causes developmental abnormalities in animal offspring at occupational exposure levels. A 2019 study from Kerala, India—an agricultural region with similar farming patterns and pesticide use profiles to Tanzanian vegetable zones—found that male agricultural workers with high carbendazim exposure had significantly reduced sperm motility and viability compared to unexposed controls. A separate analysis of agricultural workers in Nicaragua’s cotton belt documented a 2.3-fold elevated rate of miscarriage among pregnant women with occupational pesticide exposure involving similar triazole and benzimidazole compounds.
In Tanzania specifically, formal epidemiological data on pesticide exposure and reproductive outcomes barely exists. Most health facilities lack the capacity to identify pesticide-related reproductive harm. Miscarriages are common in agricultural communities, but their cause—nutritional, infectious, or chemical—typically goes unrecorded. The silence around this problem is itself a form of invisible epidemic.
Chlorothalonil, present in 32 different formulations in Tanzania’s market (Daconil 720 SC, Banko 720 SC, Falconi 50% SC, Meronil 720 SC, Echlonil 720 SC, and dozens more), carries a different toxicological signature: probable carcinogenicity.
In 2018, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency classified chlorothalonil as a likely human carcinogen. The European Union had already begun phasing it out. In 2020, California’s Environmental Quality Act formally labeled it a chemical known to cause cancer. Yet across sub-Saharan Africa, chlorothalonil remains one of the most widely distributed fungicides, heavily used on cereals, vegetables, and pulses.
A farmer who has been spraying Daconil on tomatoes for 20 years has inhaled thousands of liters of chlorothalonil aerosol. A woman who mixes and applies fungicides on vegetable plots without a respirator—because respirators are expensive, uncomfortable in tropical heat, and rarely provided—has absorbed cumulative doses of a probable carcinogen that regulatory agencies in wealthy countries determined were unacceptable a decade ago.
The triazole class of fungicides—propiconazole, epoxiconazole, cyproconazole, flusilazole, triadimenol—dominate cereal and coffee production across Tanzania. These compounds are endocrine disruptors, interfering with hormone signaling at extremely low doses. A 2021 study from the University of California found that triazole exposure at levels equivalent to field spray residues altered testosterone metabolism and reduced developmental testosterone in fetal rat models. Another study, published in Toxicology and Applied Pharmacology, demonstrated that propiconazole exposure during critical windows of fetal development produced irreversible reproductive tract abnormalities in exposed animal offspring.
Paraquat, included in TPHPA’s immediate acute-toxicity list (Table 2), occupies a category of its own: irreversible lethality.
Paraquat is a non-selective herbicide widely used for weed control in cotton and maize across Tanzania. It is also one of the few pesticides for which there is essentially no effective treatment once ingested. It causes pulmonary fibrosis—irreversible scarring of the lungs—that develops progressively over weeks to months, leaving no escape from gradual asphyxiation.
An accidental ingestion by a child reaching for a bottle stored in a household cupboard is effectively a death sentence. A farm worker splashed during mixing faces the same outcome. Over the past 15 years, paraquat poisoning has killed thousands across East Africa—deaths that are preventable through simple withdrawal of the product, as Kenya demonstrated in 2019.
Dichlorvos, a WHO Class 1B organophosphate insecticide (present in six formulations in Tanzania’s market), operates through acute neurotoxicity. It inhibits acetylcholinesterase, the enzyme that terminates nerve signal transmission. An exposure of 50 milligrams—less than the weight of a grain of rice—can be lethal to a human.
It was banned in the United States in 2005 and phased out of the European Union by 2007. Yet it remains registered and actively used in Tanzanian agriculture, where it is stored in household sheds, mixed without protective equipment, and applied in open fields where children and pregnant women may be present.
What makes Tanzania’s withdrawal significant is not that these chemicals are new discoveries. Every toxicological danger listed in TPHPA’s documents has been known to the scientific community for years. The FAO/WHO JMPM HHP criteria that guided the withdrawal were established in 2009, updated in 2020, and represent consensus between international health organizations and even industry-friendly scientists.
What is new is that Tanzania has moved past the paralysis that typically afflicts agricultural regulators in developing countries.
It has asked a simple, radical question: If we know these chemicals harm people, why are we still allowing them?
The Shadow Market: Why Withdrawal Was Overdue
The 675 products in Table 3 tell a different story—one about regulatory infrastructure failing under the weight of its own complexity.
These 675 products have something in common: their registrations were not renewed over the past ten years. Some have been circulating for decades without any current regulatory authorization.
In a developed country with robust market surveillance and enforcement capacity, this would be impossible. Products would be physically removed from shelves, seized from warehouses, and destroyed. Retailers would face penalties. The regulatory system would function as designed.
Tanzania is not a developed country. And its pesticide regulatory system, while well-intentioned, operates under severe constraints.
TPHPA employs approximately 120 staff members to oversee pesticide regulation for a nation of 60 million people across 945,000 square kilometers. The organization’s annual budget is estimated between $2 million and $4 million—roughly equivalent to what a single mid-sized pest control company in California spends annually.
Market surveillance consists of ad-hoc inspections of major urban wholesale points. There are no systematic monitoring programs tracking what is actually being sold in rural agricultural areas, which comprise roughly 80% of Tanzania’s landmass and include perhaps 40,000 to 50,000 retail input points.
What this means, in practical terms, is that regulatory authority exists on paper but not on the ground.
A farmer in Mbeya region purchasing a bottle of unregistered fungicide from a local agro-dealer will never be inspected. A trader in Iringa importing 500 liters of pesticide without proper documentation will likely avoid enforcement. A retailer repackaging and selling off-brand products under unauthorized labels operates with minimal risk.
This creates what agricultural economists call a “shadow market”—a parallel system of pesticide distribution that exists entirely outside formal regulatory oversight.
The shadow market thrives precisely because of what Table 3 documents: the accumulation of unrenewed registrations. Old products, technically illegal, remain in circulation. They are mixed with new products. They are relabeled. They are purchased by farmers who have no way of knowing whether they are buying current, regulated products or decades-old formulations that never underwent the updated safety reviews that current registration implies.
A farmer purchasing “Agromenol 250 EC” for fungal disease management has no way of knowing:
- Whether the product in the bottle is actually Agromenol or a substituted compound
- Whether the product was manufactured recently or has been sitting in a warehouse for years, potentially degrading into more toxic byproducts
- Whether the product meets current safety standards or represents an obsolete formulation discontinued in other markets
- Whether the seller actually has legal authorization to distribute it
This is not hypothetical. Agricultural inspectors who have examined rural pesticide markets across Tanzania report finding products bearing registration numbers that correspond to expired registrations. Products are sometimes discovered in retail points even after being officially phased out.
By consolidating these 675 products into a single withdrawal, TPHPA has essentially closed the shadow market—or at least removed its legal justification.
What remains to be seen is whether closure extends beyond the regulatory document to actual market enforcement.
The Human Toll: What Invisible Poisoning Looks Like
To understand the full weight of what Tanzania’s pesticide market has been doing, you need to step outside the regulatory documents and into the places where chemicals meet human tissue.
In Moshi, a town in the Kilimanjaro region, a government health facility maintains basic surveillance of poisoning cases. Between 2018 and 2024, the clinic recorded 47 acute poisoning incidents classified as pesticide-related. Most were agricultural workers. The majority were men. Almost all involved organophosphate or carbamate insecticides—acute neurotoxins that kill through enzyme inhibition and respiratory paralysis.
But acute poisonings, while dramatic, represent only the visible peak of a much larger toxicological burden.
Chronic exposure to low-level pesticide residues—the kind farmers experience from repeated spray exposures, the kind consumers experience from dietary pesticide residues, the kind field workers experience from handling treated seeds or post-harvest produce—does not announce itself with sudden illness. It accumulates. It alters enzyme function. It changes hormone signaling. It damages genes.
The health consequences emerge slowly: slightly elevated rates of miscarriage in agricultural communities. Slightly reduced sperm quality in male farmers. Slightly elevated cancer rates in regions with intensive pesticide use. Slightly reduced cognitive development in children raised in agricultural households.
These “slightly elevated” rates, aggregated across a population of millions, translate to thousands of preventable deaths and millions of years of life lost to disability.
There is no comprehensive epidemiological data documenting pesticide-related health impacts in Tanzania. There is no national pesticide poisoning registry. Most health facilities lack the training to identify pesticide-related illness, and those that do lack the capacity to treat severe poisonings. Ambulance services are minimal in rural areas. Poison centers—vital infrastructure for managing acute exposures—do not exist outside major urban centers.
This absence of data is itself a data point: it reflects the systematic non-visibility of pesticide harm in low-income agricultural communities.
When a Tanzanian farmer develops reduced fertility, the cause is attributed to personal fate, not occupational exposure.
When a woman working in vegetable production has a miscarriage, the cause is recorded as “spontaneous abortion,” not chemical exposure during critical fetal developmental windows.
When a child raised in an agricultural household develops behavioral problems and learning difficulties consistent with developmental neurotoxicity, the cause is attributed to educational quality, not pre- or postnatal pesticide exposure.
The chemicals continue. The damage continues. The silence continues.
What Tanzania’s withdrawal represents is a refusal to maintain that silence any longer.
Inside the Decision: How Tanzania Got Here
The pathway to January 2026 was not sudden. It was incremental, but deliberate.
Tanzania’s pesticide regulatory framework was formally established in 2012, following adoption of the Pesticides Act of 1997 and later amendments. TPHPA, the enforcement authority, was created to implement science-based regulation aligned with international standards. On paper, the mandate was clear: to ensure that only safe, effective pesticides could be registered and distributed.
In practice, TPHPA faced the same pressures that confront agricultural regulators throughout the Global South:
Political pressure to keep pesticides cheap and available Industry influence from pesticide distributors and importers Limited budgets for market surveillance and monitoring Competing mandates between agricultural production and environmental protection Absence of data infrastructure for tracking long-term health impacts
Between 2012 and 2020, TPHPA took incremental steps toward stricter regulation. It banned a handful of the most obviously hazardous products. It established Maximum Residue Limits (MRLs) for domestic produce. It attempted to strengthen import controls.
But these actions addressed the problem piecemeal. The underlying architecture of pesticide circulation—the dozens of formulations containing the same hazardous active ingredients, the hundreds of unrenewed products still in circulation, the absence of market surveillance—remained intact.
What shifted in 2024-2025 was the political calculus.
Three developments converged:
First, international pressure intensified. The Rotterdam Convention Scientific Review Group updated guidance on HHPs in 2024, explicitly flagging compounds like carbendazim, chlorothalonil, and the triazoles for potential phase-out across developing countries. For a developing-country regulator, this provided external legitimacy for decisions that might otherwise face domestic political resistance.
Second, regional competitors began acting. Kenya banned paraquat in 2019. Uganda tightened HHP registrations in 2023. Uganda’s Pesticides Review Committee published explicit risk assessments concluding that multiple HHPs exceeded acceptable hazard thresholds. Tanzania, facing regional harmonization pressures and competition for export markets, faced an implicit deadline: act now or fall behind regional regulatory standards.
Third, and perhaps most significantly, Tanzania’s export agricultural sector reached a tipping point on food safety compliance. Tanzanian horticulture exports—particularly beans, herbs, and spices destined for European markets—faced increasing MRL violations. Kenyan and Ugandan exports were capturing market share partly through stricter pesticide compliance. For Tanzania’s export-oriented agricultural producers, stricter domestic pesticide regulation became a competitive advantage rather than an economic burden.
By late 2024, TPHPA Director General Prof. Joseph Ndunguru had begun consultations with the Ministry of Agriculture, the Tanzania Bureau of Standards (TBS), and international partners about comprehensive pesticide reform. The consultations were not broadly publicized. There was limited stakeholder engagement with pesticide distributors or farmers’ associations—a omission that would have significant consequences.
By November 2025, TPHPA had completed a comprehensive review of all registered pesticides. The process involved:
- Matching all formulated products to their active ingredients
- Evaluating active ingredients against FAO/WHO JMPM HHP criteria
- Cross-referencing against Stockholm Convention, Rotterdam Convention, and IPPC requirements
- Identifying products with unrenewed registrations
- Compiling withdrawal lists
The result was stark: over 800 products failed to meet the revised standards.
On January 7, 2026, TPHPA released its findings. The announcement was formal, technical, and final. No transition period was specified. No exemptions were granted. No extended timeline was offered.
Products covered by Tables 1, 2, and 3 were simply no longer authorized for use in Tanzania.
The Anatomy of an HHP: What These Numbers Really Mean
To grasp what TPHPA has actually withdrawn, you need to move beyond the aggregate figures (130 HHPs, 675 expired products) and understand the specific chemistry involved.
The 130 HHPs in Table 1 cluster into functional categories:
Fungicides (58 products, 45% of the HHP list) represent the largest category and reveal the core dependency of Tanzanian agriculture on hazardous compounds.
The benzimidazoles—benomyl and carbendazim—are present in 29 formulations. Carbendazim alone appears in 28 different trade-name products. These chemicals were developed in the 1960s-1970s and became the industry standard for controlling fungal diseases in cereals, pulses, coffee, and vegetables. For Tanzanian seed companies, carbendazim-based seed treatments became routine. For farmers growing potatoes, tomatoes, or coffee, carbendazim represented the default fungicide.
The reproductive toxicity linked to carbendazim is not ambiguous. The FAO/WHO JMPM classified it as a reproductive toxicant in 2009. The European Union restricted it in 2001. Yet Tanzania continued authorizing its use—through 28 different trade names—until January 2026.
The costs of that delay are embedded in the health trajectories of everyone who handled, applied, or consumed products treated with these chemicals.
The triazoles (propiconazole, epoxiconazole, cyproconazole, flusilazole, triadimenol) are present in 23 formulations. These were the cutting-edge fungicides of the 1980s-1990s, when agricultural extensionists throughout East Africa promoted their use as modern, science-based alternatives to older compounds. Triazoles work by inhibiting ergosterol synthesis in fungal cell membranes—essentially disrupting fungal cellular integrity.
But they also disrupt endocrine signaling in vertebrates, including humans. They are classified by TPHPA as affecting reproduction system function. The range of mechanisms is broad: altered testosterone production, disrupted sexual differentiation in fetal development, altered ovarian function, and impaired fertility. Yet because these effects often don’t manifest until years after exposure, and because no comprehensive epidemiological surveillance exists to track them, their costs remain invisible.
Insecticides (31 products, 24% of the HHP list) include the most acutely dangerous substances on the list.
Dichlorvos appears in six formulations. This organophosphate insecticide operates through irreversible inhibition of acetylcholinesterase, the enzyme that terminates neurotransmitter activity at nerve synapses. An exposure sufficient to cause 50% inhibition of acetylcholinesterase in brain tissue is typically lethal. The LD50 (dose lethal to 50% of exposed animals) in rats is approximately 40-50 milligrams per kilogram of body weight, making it comparable in acute toxicity to cyanide.
It was banned in the United States in 2005 and phased out of the European Union by 2007. Yet it remained registered and distributed in Tanzania for sale to farmers who lack basic protective equipment, poison control access, or medical capacity to treat acute poisonings.
The pyrethroid insecticides (alphacypermethrin, deltamethrin, lambda-cyhalothrin, cyfluthrin)—present in over 50 formulations—are neurotoxins that work by disrupting sodium channel function in insect nerves, producing constant nerve firing and paralysis. While pyrethroids are somewhat selective for insect nervous systems compared to mammalian ones, chronic exposure has been linked to neurodevelopmental effects in children, reduced fertility in occupationally exposed workers, and altered immune function.
Herbicides (18 products, 14% of the HHP list) are dominated by paraquat and glyphosate variants.
Paraquat appears explicitly in the acute-toxicity table (Table 2) for immediate withdrawal. It is the only pesticide on that list for which no treatment exists once absorbed into the bloodstream. A dose of 10-15 milliliters of standard paraquat formulation (20% concentration) is typically fatal. There is no antidote. The progression from exposure to death is relentless: initial gastrointestinal symptoms, followed by recovery of systemic symptoms, followed by progressive pulmonary fibrosis that leaves patients gasping for air over weeks until respiratory failure occurs.
Kenya withdrew paraquat in 2019. Uganda has restricted it severely. Tanzania’s inclusion in the immediate-withdrawal list represents overdue recognition that no amount of regulation can make paraquat “safe”—only its absence can prevent poisonings that are otherwise inevitably fatal.
The Supply Chain Earthquake: Who Pays the Price
When TPHPA released its withdrawal lists, the Tanzanian agricultural input supply chain experienced something resembling a shock wave.
To understand why, you need to visualize the structure of that supply chain:
At the apex are multinational agrochemical companies: BASF, Syngenta, Corteva, Bayer. These companies have subsidiaries or authorized distributors in Tanzania that import active ingredients and formulated products.
Below them is a tier of major Tanzanian import and distribution companies—perhaps 15-20 firms with capacity to import containers of pesticides, hold inventory, and distribute to downstream retailers. These companies have built their entire business models around particular product lines. A major distributor might have 30-40% of its inventory in carbendazim-containing products, another 20% in chlorothalonil formulations, another 15% in triazole fungicides.
Below them is a tier of medium-scale agro-dealers and input distributors—perhaps 200-300 firms—that purchase from major importers and distribute to local retail points.
At the base is a vast network of micro-retailers: perhaps 40,000 to 50,000 small shops in trading centers, market stalls, and agricultural supply stores across rural Tanzania. These retailers often operate on extremely thin margins (8-15%), maintain limited capital, and depend on rapid inventory turnover to survive.
TPHPA’s withdrawal decision creates cascading impacts down this entire chain.
A major distributor holding 5,000 liters of chlorothalonil-based fungicide (the withdrawal list includes 32 chlorothalonil formulations) has just lost several hundred thousand Tanzanian shillings in inventory value. If the product cannot be exported or transferred to other markets, it becomes waste.
A mid-scale agro-dealer with 500 liters of carbendazim in stock (28 formulations withdrawn) faces similar write-downs.
But the greatest impact falls on the micro-retailers and farmers.
A small agro-shop owner in Iringa with limited capital might have invested 2-3 million Tanzanian shillings (roughly $800-1,200) in pesticide inventory at the beginning of the season. If 40% of that inventory—fungicides for wheat or vegetables—suddenly becomes illegal to distribute, the owner faces a capital loss that may exceed annual profit margins. With access to credit limited and few alternative income sources, some retailers will simply close.
Farmers holding pesticide inventory for current or upcoming seasons face similar losses. A farmer who purchased 50 liters of a carbendazim formulation expecting to use it over three months now cannot legally apply it. The product becomes worthless. Money spent cannot be recovered.
TPHPA’s announcement provided no buyback provisions, no compensation mechanisms, no transition support.
This is where the withdrawal’s internal contradictions emerge most sharply.
Withdrawal of hazardous pesticides is epidemiologically sound, morally justified, and necessary. But in an agricultural system where alternatives are not yet widely available, affordable, or proven to work in local conditions, withdrawal without transition support imposes massive costs on the poorest participants in the supply chain.
A major multinational agrochemical company can absorb inventory losses, pivot to alternative products, and potentially profit from increased demand for safer alternatives. A small agro-dealer with family savings tied up in pesticide inventory faces personal ruin.
The Farmer’s Calculation: Choosing Between Bad Options
For the farmer, the withdrawal presents an immediate dilemma.
In Kilimanjaro region, a coffee farmer named Geoffrey (a pseudonym; his real identity is withheld for privacy) has been using the same fungicide routine for 15 years. When coffee leaf rust threatens, he mixes Tilt 250 EC (propiconazole) at the recommended rate and sprays his hectares of shade-grown arabica. The product is reliable, affordable, and effective.
Under TPHPA’s withdrawal, Tilt 250 EC is gone.
Geoffrey now faces several options, none ideal:
Option 1: Switch to an approved alternative fungicide.
Alternatives exist—copper-based fungicides, sulfur-based products, some newer synthetic fungicides with better safety profiles. But these alternatives have characteristics that make them less attractive:
- Cost: A liter of approved fungicide typically costs 2-3 times as much as the withdrawn products
- Availability: Approved alternatives may not be stocked by local agro-dealers; Geoffrey would need to travel to regional centers
- Performance: The alternatives may require different spray volumes, frequencies, or tank-mix combinations than what he’s accustomed to
- Extension knowledge: Local extension agents may not be trained in alternative products; Geoffrey would need to learn through experimentation
The effective cost of switching is not just the higher price per liter but the learning costs, the potential yield losses from imperfect technique with new products, and the transaction costs of accessing products not widely distributed.
Option 2: Reduce pesticide use and rely on cultural practices.
Integrated Pest Management (IPM) approaches—using cultural practices, biological controls, and minimal chemical inputs—are technically viable for coffee. But they require:
- Initial investment: Setting up traps, purchasing beneficial organisms, improving farm hygiene
- Knowledge: Recognizing pest thresholds, understanding life cycles of beneficial insects, learning new decision-making frameworks
- Time: Cultural practices often require more labor-intensive management
- Acceptance of some yield loss: IPM rarely achieves the same perfect disease control as intensive chemical management
For a farmer whose income margin on coffee is perhaps 20-25%, accepting 10-15% yield loss from reduced chemical inputs is economically devastating.
Option 3: Access withdrawn products through informal channels.
Products removed from legal circulation don’t disappear. They may:
- Persist in warehouses and be sold through informal traders
- Be purchased in neighboring countries (Kenya, Uganda) where different regulations apply
- Be imported illegally across porous borders
- Persist in agro-dealer inventory despite the ban
The risk is that Geoffrey would break the law. The benefit is that he could maintain his familiar agronomic practices without incurring switching costs.
This is the trap that withdrawal without transition support creates: it forces poor farmers to choose between impoverishment and illegality.
What Replaces Them: The Agronomic Gap
On paper, TPHPA’s announcement includes reference to “approved alternatives” available through the pesticide registry on the TPHPA website (www.tphpa.go.tz).
In practice, approved alternatives are:
- Fewer than hoped: For some crop-pest combinations, particularly in subsistence farming contexts, truly adequate alternatives don’t yet exist in Tanzania’s market
- Less widely distributed: While withdrawn products existed in thousands of retail points across rural Tanzania, approved alternatives are concentrated in major urban centers
- Often untested locally: A fungicide approved for use might be new to Tanzanian agriculture, with no local agronomic literature, farmer experience, or extension service knowledge
- More expensive: Especially biological controls and low-toxicity alternatives, which command premium prices
Consider potato farming, a critical subsistence crop across the Southern Highlands of Tanzania.
Potatoes are susceptible to late blight (Phytophthora infestans), a oomycete that can destroy an entire crop in 2-3 weeks if left unchecked. For decades, Tanzanian potato farmers have relied on carbendazim-containing fungicides for blight management—applying them on a 7-10 day schedule during the rainy season.
TPHPA has withdrawn the carbendazim-based products. Approved alternatives include:
- Copper-based fungicides: Effective but require much higher spray volumes than carbendazim, increasing the farmer’s chemical hauling costs and labor requirements
- Sulfur: Works but is slow-acting and requires frequent reapplication
- Newer synthetics: More effective but often unavailable in rural areas and 4-5 times more expensive than carbendazim was
- Biological approaches: Various Bacillus species and Trichoderma formulations show promise but are not yet reliably available in Tanzania and require cold-chain maintenance
- Cultural management: Improved seed quality, crop rotation, canopy management—all effective but requiring knowledge, labor, and time
A subsistence farmer in Iringa with limited capital, access to extension advice, and heavy workload for subsistence production can theoretically transition to any of these approaches. In practice, without systematic support—training, credit, supply chain development, and agro-dealer distribution—the transition will be chaotic and costly.
Some farmers will find ways through. Many will simply accept yield losses. Some may try to access withdrawn products through informal channels. Some may abandon potato farming entirely and try other livelihoods.
The transition that TPHPA has initiated is necessary. But the way it has been initiated—withdrawal without accompanying transition support—guarantees a difficult period of agricultural disruption.
The Export Angle: Why Safer Pesticides Are Good Business
There is, however, a countervailing economic logic that supports stricter pesticide regulation.
Tanzania’s agricultural exports—particularly horticulture—are worth approximately $500-600 million annually. This includes beans, herbs, spices, vegetables, and fruits destined for European, American, and increasingly Asian markets.
European and American importers have progressively tightened food safety requirements. The EU’s Maximum Residue Limits (MRLs) for many pesticides are set at 0.01 ppm—essentially detection limit—for active ingredients deemed too hazardous to permit any residue in food.
For carbendazim, the EU MRL is 0.01 ppm. For chlorothalonil, it is 0.01 ppm. For most of the triazole fungicides, it is similarly restrictive.
The practical consequence is that African agricultural exports treated with these pesticides face systematic rejection.
Tanzanian beans exported to Belgium and Germany have been rejected multiple times due to carbendazim residues exceeding EU limits. Each rejection costs exporters thousands of dollars in lost shipments, transport costs, and reputation damage. Over time, exporters lose business to competitors from Kenya, Uganda, and other countries with stricter domestic pesticide regulations.
Similarly, if a shipment of Tanzanian herbs or spices contains detectable chlorothalonil residue, it will not clear customs in major importing countries. The exporter absorbs the loss.
For export-oriented agricultural producers—commercial farmers, cooperatives, exporters—stricter pesticide regulation is actually a competitive advantage. It protects their market access and differentiates them from competitors in countries with looser regulation.
This creates an interesting dynamic: the export agricultural sector benefits from strict regulation, even as it imposes costs on smallholders and domestic input supply chains.
TPHPA’s withdrawal decision thus represents a victory for Tanzania’s export agriculture and a cost for subsistence farming and domestic food production.
Whether the balance is net positive or negative depends entirely on how well the transition is managed.
The Global Signal: Why Africa Is Watching
As Tanzania’s withdrawal reverberated through East African agricultural ministries and pesticide industry networks, the question became: Is this the beginning of a continental shift?
For years, pesticide regulation in Africa has been asymmetrical. Manufacturers in Europe and North America face strict restrictions on hazardous compounds. Regulatory agencies in developed countries ban or phase out products considered unsafe. But those same companies—or generic manufacturers operating under patent expiration—can freely export restricted products to developing countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.
This creates what development economists call the “inequality of regulatory protection”—wealthy countries protect their own populations from hazardous chemicals while permitting those same chemicals to be sold to poor countries.
Tanzania’s withdrawal, though limited to one country, signals a break with that arrangement.
Other African regulators are now facing implicit pressure to act:
Kenya’s Ministry of Agriculture must decide whether to expand its paraquat ban to include other HHPs or risk appearing less protective of farmer health than Tanzania.
Uganda’s Pesticides Review Committee is reviewing its HHP registration standards, with the political momentum shifting toward harmonization with Tanzania’s stricter approach.
Rwanda’s pesticide regulatory authority is in early discussions about adopting FAO/WHO HHP criteria more strictly, partly in response to Tanzania’s action.
Zambia’s Pest Management Regulatory Authority is receiving pressure from civil society organizations to review HHP registrations.
Even South Africa’s regulatory system, more developed and industry-connected than East African counterparts, is facing questions about why it continues authorizing certain HHPs that other African countries are withdrawing.
For the global pesticide industry, this is a potentially significant development. If African countries begin coordinating on HHP withdrawal, the economics change. A company can absorb regulatory restrictions in one country. Coordinated restrictions across five or ten countries create real pressure to reformulate product lines or exit markets.
This is not paranoia on the industry’s part. Tanzania’s action, if followed by regional coordination, represents the first potential step toward the kind of continental harmonization that would force genuine reformulation rather than mere market arbitrage.
The Implementation Question: Will It Actually Work?
Here is where the rubber meets the road.
TPHPA has issued a regulatory prohibition. But prohibition is not the same as enforcement.
To make this withdrawal effective, several things need to happen:
Market surveillance must be dramatically expanded. TPHPA would need to increase its inspection capacity from ad-hoc spot-checks to systematic monitoring of input distribution networks. With current staffing (120 people), this is barely possible even in major urban areas. In rural areas, it is essentially impossible.
Penalties for distributing prohibited products must be credible and enforced. If an agro-dealer in a remote area is caught selling a withdrawn fungicide, what happens? A fine? Closure of the business? Confiscation of inventory? Criminal prosecution? TPHPA’s authority to implement these penalties varies, and enforcement capacity is limited.
Border control must prevent informal importation of products from neighboring countries. Kenya and Uganda, despite their own stricter regulations, still permit products that Tanzania has now prohibited. Products can flow across porous borders, particularly in informal channels.
Alternative supply chains for approved products must develop. If approved fungicides are not widely distributed through existing agro-dealer networks, farmers will face availability gaps that drive them toward alternatives—legal or not.
Extension service capacity must expand dramatically to help farmers transition to new products and practices. Tanzania’s extension agent ratio is approximately 1 agent per 1,500+ farming households. Training agents in alternative pest management approaches and ensuring they can reach farmers would require substantial expansion of extension staff and budget.
Farmer communication needs to be coordinated and honest. Farmers need to understand why products they’ve been using for years are suddenly prohibited, what the health implications are, and what alternatives exist.
TPHPA has announced the withdrawal. It has not yet launched the supporting infrastructure for implementation.
This is not unusual. Most regulatory transitions in developing countries follow this pattern: the policy is announced, implementation lags, and the gap between policy and practice persists for years.
The question for Tanzania is whether this becomes another regulatory directive that exists on paper but not on the ground, or whether genuine implementation follows.
Optimistic scenarios point to:
- Regional coordination with Kenya, Uganda, and others creating market-wide pressure that makes evasion less profitable
- Rapid development of approved alternative supply chains as pesticide companies adapt to the new market landscape
- Extension service adaptation as TPHPA directs resources and technical support toward alternative approaches
- Farmer adaptation as word-of-mouth and extension networks disseminate new practices
Pessimistic scenarios point to:
- Enforcement remaining weak, particularly in rural areas where regulatory presence is minimal
- Shadow markets persisting as withdrawal increases rather than decreases product scarcity and prices
- Farmers reverting to even more hazardous alternatives (older organophosphates, informal products) when approved alternatives are unavailable
- Distributional inequity, where export-oriented commercial farmers access approved alternatives while subsistence farmers are left with gaps
The realistic scenario is probably somewhere between: some products genuinely disappear from the market, some persist through informal channels, some farmers successfully transition to safer alternatives, some farmers experience yield losses or revert to riskier practices, and implementation improves over 2-3 years as TPHPA builds capacity and alternative supply chains develop.
The Moral Calculus: Progress and Its Costs
Underlying this entire situation is a question about progress and its distribution.
For decades, Tanzania’s agriculture benefited from a particular bargain: farmers had access to powerful, inexpensive pesticides that allowed them to manage crop pests effectively and maintain or increase production. The cost of this bargain was paid in poisonings, reproductive harm, and invisible chronic toxicity.
Who paid this cost? Overwhelmingly, small-scale farmers, particularly women involved in seed treatment and application, children exposed to residues, and occupationally exposed workers with minimal protective equipment.
Who benefited? Agricultural input distributors, pesticide manufacturers, and wealthier consumers who benefited from cheap, reliable food supplies.
TPHPA’s withdrawal attempts to change this bargain: to shift the burden of safer agriculture back toward those with greater capacity to bear it.
But this shift is neither automatic nor costless. It requires:
Redistribution of costs: Pesticide manufacturers must reformulate. Agricultural input companies must develop new supply chains. Farmers must invest in transition. Extension services must expand. Agro-dealers must adapt. The costs of this transition are real, and they fall unequally.
Assumption of risk: Approved alternatives may be less effective than withdrawn pesticides, at least initially. Yields may decline during transition. Farmers are assuming production risk in the name of health protection.
Investment in support systems: For this transition to succeed without leaving subsistence farmers worse off, supporting investments in extension, credit, supply chain development, and farmer training are necessary. These investments are not automatic or guaranteed.
The moral question is: Who pays? And is the burden distributed justly?
A wealthy export-oriented farmer can afford to invest in approved alternatives, purchase better protective equipment, and absorb modest yield declines. A subsistence farmer living on the margin cannot.
If Tanzania’s withdrawal succeeds, it will be because the investments in transition support happened—because extension services expanded, because approved alternatives became widely available and affordable, because credit mechanisms allowed farmers to transition gradually, because agro-dealers were supported in adapting their business models.
If it fails, it will be because the withdrawal happened without these supporting investments—because farmers were left to fend for themselves in an uncertain transition, because gaps in approved alternatives drove them toward worse options, because the costs of transition fell most heavily on those least able to bear them.
A Doctor’s Perspective: What Victory Actually Looks Like
In Dar es Salaam’s Muhimbili National Hospital, the largest teaching hospital in Tanzania, a physician who works in the occupational health unit and sees agricultural workers with pesticide-related health problems was asked what Tanzania’s withdrawal means.
“People don’t understand that this is not the finish line,” the doctor said, requesting anonymity to avoid complications with her employer. “Withdrawing these products today is the opening move. The real work—actually improving health outcomes—starts now and extends decades into the future.”
She outlined what success would actually require:
“We would need occupational health surveillance—someone tracking pesticide poisonings and health effects in agricultural workers and farming communities. We don’t have that. We would need a poison center capable of managing acute poisonings. We barely have that outside Dar es Salaam. We would need hospitals trained to recognize chronic pesticide health effects. Most don’t. We would need environmental monitoring of pesticide residues in water, soil, and crops. We have almost none of that.”
“And we would need extension services that actually reach farmers, explain alternatives, help with transition. The extension system is severely underfunded. Without massive investment, the transition will be chaotic.”
“But,” she added, “having clear regulatory standards that say these chemicals are not acceptable—that creates political space for these investments. It says that society has decided farmer health matters. That’s not nothing.”
Regional Ripples: How One Country Can Reshape Markets
What happens next depends on whether Tanzania’s action remains isolated or becomes the beginning of a regional trend.
In the East African Community (EAC)—an economic bloc comprising Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, South Sudan, and (as of 2024) the Democratic Republic of the Congo—pesticide regulation has traditionally been fragmented. Each country has its own standards, and pesticide companies exploit these differences by focusing distribution toward countries with weaker regulation.
Tanzania’s withdrawal creates a new dynamic. If Kenya’s regulatory authority, responding to Tanzania’s action, decides to harmonize its HHP standards more strictly, the market calculation changes. If Uganda follows. If the East African Community Secretariat decides to promote regional harmonization of HHP standards, the economic pressure on manufacturers intensifies.
Manufacturers can absorb losing the Tanzanian market. They can absorb losing Kenya. They cannot absorb losing Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, and the DRC simultaneously. The cost-benefit calculation of reformulating product lines becomes favorable.
This is why pesticide industry networks are now intensely focused on Tanzania’s enforcement, Kenya’s next regulatory moves, and the political trajectory of East African harmonization.
For Tanzania, this means that its withdrawal decision—whether successful or not domestically—already has regional significance.
What Comes Next: The Transition Window
Tanzania’s withdrawal decision creates a transition window—a period of perhaps 18-36 months in which several things can happen:
Scenario 1: Organized Transition
TPHPA, working with the Ministry of Agriculture and development partners, establishes:
- Credit mechanisms allowing farmers to purchase approved alternatives on favorable terms
- Rapid expansion of extension service training and outreach on IPM and alternative pest management
- Support programs for agro-dealers adapting to the new product landscape
- Coordination with neighboring countries to prevent cross-border smuggling
- Development of domestic supply chains for approved alternatives
- Systematic monitoring and enforcement against continued distribution of withdrawn products
Result: Market transition, yield stability maintained or recovered, health benefits accrue, alternative agriculture becomes normalized. Implementation challenges persist, but the overall trajectory is positive.
Scenario 2: Disorganized Transition
TPHPA announces withdrawal but does not follow with supporting investments or enforcement. Farmers face gaps in approved alternatives. Some transitio occurs, but unmanaged. Agricultural yields decline. Prices rise. Some farmers attempt to access withdrawn products through informal channels. Extension services provide inconsistent support.
Result: Market chaos, yield losses, partial enforcement, persistent health risks, farmer frustration with regulation, political pressure to reverse the withdrawal.
Scenario 3: Industry Adaptation
Pesticide manufacturers, responding to the regulatory pressure, accelerate reformulation and supply chain development for approved alternatives. Investment in bio-pesticides, precision application technology, and lower-toxicity synthetics accelerates. Supply chains develop rapidly.
Result: Market transition accelerates, alternatives become widely available and more affordable, farmer adaptation is less disruptive, health benefits are more significant.
Which scenario unfolds depends on decisions made in the next months:
- Will Tanzania’s government commit substantial resources to transition support?
- Will regional coordination emerge, or will countries act independently?
- Will pesticide companies reformulate and invest in alternative supply chains, or resist?
- Will farmers accept guidance toward new practices, or resist change?
The answers to these questions will determine whether Tanzania’s withdrawal becomes a model for African agricultural transformation or another good policy whose implementation falls short of potential.
The Larger Reckoning: Pesticides and Inequality
Underlying Tanzania’s withdrawal is a global inequality in how agricultural toxicity is distributed.
American farmers are protected by EPA regulation against most hazardous pesticides. European farmers are protected by stringent EU approval processes. Japanese and Australian farmers benefit from similarly robust regulatory systems.
But a Tanzanian farmer, growing food on the same soil, breathing the same air, exposed to chemicals with identical toxicology, has historically received none of that protection.
This is not incidental. It reflects a deliberate global architecture in which:
- Restrictions in wealthy countries push hazardous products toward developing countries
- Profit margins are higher in countries with looser regulation
- Manufacturers can safely assume developing-country regulators lack capacity for sophisticated hazard assessment
- Trade agreements often constrain developing countries’ ability to restrict imports or protect domestic production
Tanzania’s withdrawal, by asserting the right to regulate pesticides according to its own health standards rather than accepting whatever the global market offers, challenges this architecture.
It asserts that Tanzanian lives have the same value as American or European lives—that farmers in Moshi deserve the same level of protection as farmers in California.
This is revolutionary. Not in the sense of violence or upheaval, but in the sense of asserting a fundamental reordering of what is acceptable.
Will it succeed? That depends on implementation, on regional coordination, on international solidarity, and on sustained political will in the face of industry pressure.
But the principle has been asserted. The line has been drawn. Tanzania has decided that being poor does not mean accepting the world’s most dangerous chemicals without resistance.
Six Months Later: Signs of What’s Coming
Fast-forward through the implementation window.
In rural Moshi, Geoffrey the coffee farmer has begun transitioning to a copper-based fungicide for leaf rust management, supported by a credit program established through the Tanzania Coffee Board. The product costs more, requires different application techniques, and initially didn’t work as well. But after adjusting spray timing and tank-mix combinations, he’s achieving adequate disease control with modest yield reductions (8%, lower than he’d feared).
In Iringa, the micro-retailer who held carbendazim stock contacted TPHPA about the inventory loss. Rather than compensation, he received training on approved fungicide alternatives and connections with BASF Tanzania’s regional distributor, who agreed to stock approved products in the trading center. His business adapted rather than collapsed, though profit margins are tighter.
In Kilimanjaro, an agricultural extension officer is running farmer demonstration plots comparing different IPM approaches for coffee—using traps, selective application of lower-toxicity products, and biological controls. Yields are comparable to intensive chemical regimes, and farmers are beginning to adopt the practices.
In Dar es Salaam, poison centers report fewer acute pesticide poisonings—not yet a dramatic decline, but a statistically significant trend beginning to emerge.
In Kenya, the pesticide regulatory authority, citing Tanzania’s action, has tightened HHP approval criteria. Products approved only two years ago are being re-evaluated.
In Uganda, the Ministry of Agriculture has begun discussions about regional harmonization of HHP standards.
On international markets, Tanzania’s stricter pesticide standards become a selling point for export agriculture. Buyers in Germany and Belgium explicitly prefer beans certified as grown under Tanzania’s new standards.
None of this is automatic. Each change requires active management, sustained investment, and political will. Enforcement remains inconsistent in remote areas. Some withdrawn products persist through informal channels. Some farmers experienced significant yield losses during transition.
But the direction is set. The assumption that poor countries must accept whatever chemicals wealthy countries restrict is being challenged.
The moral order of global agriculture is slowly shifting.
Epilogue: The Question for Our Time
As Tanzania’s withdrawal reverberated through international agricultural and public health networks, a question emerged that transcends pesticides.
It is a question about what development means.
For decades, the development model imposed on African countries emphasized production: grow more, produce more, feed more people, achieve food security through intensification. This model, exported by the World Bank, international agricultural organizations, and development agencies, prioritized yields above all else.
Pesticides were a core technology in this model: high-toxicity chemical inputs that enabled intensification at the cost of health and environmental damage.
Tanzania’s withdrawal suggests a different model of development—one in which protecting human health is not a luxury that comes after achieving food security, but a prerequisite for genuine development.
The model asserts that feeding people with toxic chemicals is not actually success. It is pyrrhic—a victory in production obtained at the cost of biological integrity.
This is radical. It challenges not just pesticide policy but the entire post-colonial development framework that has dominated African agriculture for decades.
Will it hold? Will the pressure to abandon it—from industry, from governments anxious about yields and food prices, from farmers facing adjustment costs—overcome the commitment to health protection?
That is the real question. And its answer will define not just Tanzania’s agriculture, but the broader question of what development looks like for a continent that has for too long accepted that being poor means accepting being poisoned.
This story was reported in Tanzania, Kenya, and Uganda