Why TZ cannot afford to lose its cotton future

COTTON has historically contributed to Tanzania’s industrial growth by supporting countless farmers, supplying the textile sector, and generating essential export revenue. Today, that foundation is eroding. In Tanzania, the cotton season typically begins with planting between November and January, while harvesting takes place from June to September. The Lake Zone remains the country’s primary cotton-producing region.

Cotton cultivation has declined significantly. Available evidence shows that the planted area fell from about 437,000 hectares in 2020 to 310,431 hectares in 2022/23. Simiyu remains the leading cotton-producing region, accounting for 160,527 hectares. National cotton production also declined from 331,524 tonnes in 2019/20 to 218,413 tonnes in 2022/23.

This decline has multiple causes, including low farm yields, rising input costs, pests and diseases, unpredictable rainfall, declining soil fertility, delayed planting, limited access to quality inputs, and competition from alternative crops and other economic activities.

Although Simiyu has remained relatively resilient because of its strong cottongrowing tradition, its performance has nevertheless been constrained compared with its previous dominance. In 2022/23, the national planted area was about 310,431 hectares, with Simiyu accounting for roughly 160,527 hectares, more than half of Tanzania’s cotton cultivation.

Historically, Tanzania has cultivated relatively limited acreage and produced less cotton than its potential would suggest. This underscores the need to raise productivity rather than simply expand the planted area. The real issue is not only that Tanzania is producing less cotton.

More importantly, producers are not capturing enough value from the cotton they do produce. The cotton crisis, therefore, extends beyond agriculture. It affects productivity, water efficiency, industrial competitiveness, foreign-exchange earnings, and economic policy.

The farmer’s role in this failure is largely indirect. Farmers respond to the incentives, risks, and rewards created by the policy and market environment. To revive cotton, Tanzania must do more than encourage farmers to plant it again. The country needs to ensure that cotton is profitable to grow, efficient to process, and valuable to export, covering every stage from seed and fertiliser to soil, bale, factory, and fashion.

A decade of plans, a decade of decline

Tanzania does not lack cotton strategies. What it lacks is sustained implementation. The country has pursued cotton revival through initiatives including the Cotton-toclothing Strategy 2016–2020, successive Cotton Development Strategies, and other programmes.

The Cotton-toClothing strategy sought to increase cotton production and productivity while promoting processing and value addition, with implementation targets extending to 2020. The Tanzania Agricultural Development Bank later reported a more ambitious sector target: Making Tanzania a leading African cotton producer by 2025 by raising production to 1 million tonnes per year, alongside greater mechanisation and value addition. That target was not achieved.

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More recently, the Tanzania Cotton Board has adopted a more immediate recovery objective: Raising seed-cotton production to 300,000 tonnes in the 2026/27 season, from an estimated 222,057 tonnes in 2025/26, following the exceptionally poor 149,361 tonnes recorded in 2024/25.

The Cotton Victoria Project is another important revival effort. It focuses on improved agronomic practices, including planting at 60 cm × 30 cm spacing. By 2024, the project had engaged more than 517,000 farmers, with an ambition to reach 600,000 farmers in cotton-growing areas.

In 2025, the Tanzania Agricultural Research Institute (TARI) reported that some farmers adopting improved practices had doubled yields from below 500 kg to more than 1,000 kg per acre. The central lesson from these strategies is clear: Tanzania’s cotton revival should not be built primarily around expanding acreage.

The emphasis should be on productivity, profitability, and value addition, moving from the export of raw cotton towards a competitive industry spanning cultivation, ginning, textile manufacturing, and garment production.

** Institutions matter**

Institutional uncertainty has also contributed to the sector’s difficulties.

Efforts to revive cotton have been accompanied by repeated restructuring proposals, even when the sector most needed stability and continuity. A more fundamental challenge is Tanzania’s difficulty in embedding technical expertise within domestic institutions that have the authority, continuity, and accountability required to drive long-term reform.

Expertise is often captured in reports and consultancy projects, but it too rarely becomes institutional knowledge within the organisations responsible for implementation. Without institutional resilience that survives beyond a single budget cycle or administrative change, another strategy alone will not revive Tanzania’s cotton industry.

** Why farmers are leaving cotton**

Cotton carries significant risks: Pests, diseases, weather variability, input costs, quality fluctuations, and uncertain prices. Competing crops can offer more predictable returns and, in some cases, better-established marketing arrangements. Farmers understandably prioritise returns, risk management, and market stability over national export objectives. When policies improve the predictability and profitability of a particular crop, farmers tend to adapt their production decisions accordingly.

Tanzania should therefore focus on restoring confidence by ensuring access to quality seed, promoting appropriate fertiliser use, strengthening agricultural research and extension, maintaining functional markets, and establishing predictable trade and tax policies.

When policy creates conflicting incentives, trade policy can make matters worse. Export-facilitation measures may make it easier to import cotton and other textile inputs, while domestic cotton producers continue to bear taxes and regulatory costs. If imported fibre can enter the textile industry more easily or cheaply than domestically produced fibre, the incentive to invest in local cotton cultivation diminishes.

The value chain is beginning to shift

The Bank of Tanzania (BoT) classifies Tanzania’s textile exports as manufactured goods. In FY2024/25, such exports amounted to 87.4 million US dollars, rising to 106.1 million US dollars in FY2025/26. This represents an increase of approximately 18.7 million US dollars, or 21.4 per cent, between the two periods.

The figures are based on Bank of Tanzania export data ending in March, and the FY2025/26 figure is provisional. This increase is encouraging. However, 106.1 million US dollars remains modest given Tanzania’s cotton-producing potential. It underscores the importance of moving beyond raw cotton exports towards a complete cotton-to-textileto-garment value chain that can create jobs, generate foreign exchange, and retain more industrial value within Tanzania.

For comparison, cotton exports earned 95.8 million US dollars in the year ending March 2026. Manufactured textile exports have therefore slightly surpassed raw cotton exports. At the same time, however, domestic cotton production is becoming increasingly inadequate to meet the demands of the downstream industry.

In effect, Tanzania has preserved part of its downstream industry while allowing some of the foundation supporting it to weaken. The objective should not be to protect cotton simply for cotton’s sake. Rather, the goal should be to make domestic cotton competitive enough to encourage farmers to produce it and manufacturers to use it.

Productivity, not nostalgia

A productivity-focused approach suggests that Tanzania’s cotton revival should not simply seek to restore previous acreage levels. Instead, the priority should be to increase yield per hectare, use inputs more efficiently, and improve fibre quality.

Brazil provides a useful international example. Its cotton industry has modernised through improvements in genetics, farming practices, mechanisation, and production systems. As part of DIRA 2050 and its ambition to build a one trillion-dollars economy by 2050, Tanzania needs its own productivity revolution.

This means climate-resilient varieties, stronger agricultural research and extension, precision agriculture, and mechanisation from planting through harvesting. Better genetics, however, will deliver limited benefits without a reliable seed system capable of preserving varietal identity and consistently delivering quality seed to farmers.

** From the field to the bale**

Ginning is often underestimated in discussions about cotton competitiveness. Modern ginning technologies, standardised grading, rigorous quality assessment, and bale-level traceability can improve fibre quality and strengthen Tanzania’s position in international markets.

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The objective should be consistent fibre characteristics that meet the requirements of modern spinning mills. This requires more than simply producing more cotton. Tanzania must increase yield per hectare, improve fibre quality per bale, and maximise economic returns from each unit of water and other resources used in production.

** Cotton and the water question**

Water must also be part of the cotton debate. Cotton cannot be considered separately from Tanzania’s broader water-management challenges. Agriculture accounts for roughly 89 to 90 per cent of Tanzania’s total water withdrawals. Data from the World Bank and the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) indicate that irrigated agriculture accounts for the overwhelming majority of these withdrawals, making water productivity inseparable from agricultural policy.

Crop policy should therefore be more closely aligned with water availability. Groundwater extraction requires better measurement and regulation, while irrigation incentives should promote efficient water use and appropriate crop choices. Tanzania needs to ask a fundamental question: How much economic value are we creating from each unit of water?

** From farm to fashion**

Tanzania needs a minimum 20-year Cotton Compact that brings together central and local governments, farmers, researchers, ginners, spinners, textile manufacturers and exporters. Success should be measured through clear outcomes: Higher yields, improved water productivity, better fibre quality, higher farmer incomes, a more reliable domestic cotton supply and increased export value.

Research, seed development, mechanisation, and modern ginning require sustained investment as well as widespread commercial adoption. The goal should be a genuine farm-to-fashion transformation linking seed, research, farming, water, mechanisation, ginning, textiles and exports into one cohesive and competitive value chain.

The arithmetic of value

There is an important statistical qualification in assessing Tanzania’s cotton production. The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) Agricultural Sample Survey 2023/24 reports cotton production of 146,798 tonnes, while the Tanzania cotton-sector investment roadmap uses 331,524 tonnes as its baseline/current production figure.

These figures are based on different statistical methodologies and should therefore not be treated as directly comparable. Accordingly, the 1.52-million-bale figure should be treated as a sector estimate rather than an NBS figure. Cotton production fell to 149,361 tonnes in 2024/25, equivalent to roughly 0.69 million bales. The decline has been associated with adverse weather, drought, weak extension services and other production challenges.

For the 2026/27 season, the official target is 300,000 tonnes of seed cotton. The Tanzania Cotton Board announced this target in April 2026, following production of 222,057 tonnes in 2025/26, up from 149,361 tonnes in 2024/25. But the more revealing arithmetic is not simply about tonnes or bales. It is about value added.

The choice before Tanzania

Tanzania can rebuild a successful cotton industry, but slogans alone will not achieve it. The country must reform the crop’s economic framework, raise productivity, improve fibre quality, strengthen institutions, and reconnect every part of the supply chain from seed and soil to bale, factory, and fashion.

The iconic white cotton fields can return. But their return should not be measured simply by the number of hectares planted. It should be measured by how productively the land and water are used, how much farmers earn, how much value is retained in Tanzania, how competitive the textile industry becomes, and how much foreign exchange the entire value chain generates.

Tanzania’s cotton future will ultimately depend on whether the country can transform cotton from a crop into a competitive industrial ecosystem from seed to soil, bale to factory and factory to fashion. Dr Hildebrand Shayo is an economist currently employed at TIB Development Bank in Tanzania.

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