Tanzania: How the Country Can Export Its Pests And Grow Rich

Source from:  The East African (Nairobi) 20 September 2008 09/23/2008

Tanzania could make its name as a commercial exporter of the verminous quelea-quelea bird. Local entrepreneurs could make money hand-over-fist, beating struggling producers of traditional exports like coffee, cotton, cashewnut and tobacco. A local newspaper had a picture of visitors to the Nane-Nane Farmers Day showgrounds in Dodoma viewing quelea-quelea packaged for sale. Apparently, some enterprising folk have hit on the idea of preparing the birds for human consumption. The import of this exotic possibility becomes manifest when we view it in context. Quelea-quelea are voracious pests a single flock of whom numbers in the millions. Known as locust birds, quelea terrorise farmers across Africa, usually arriving in clouds covering hundreds of acres, devastating crops. If Tanzania can make a dent in these flocks by barbecuing and selling them to consumers, the country would turn the tables on a major pest. Furthermore, Tanzanians would in the same clean sweep be killing two valuable birds with the same stone: exporting barbecued quelea -- and the crops they failed to devour in flight! But, is the Quelea-quelea a flash in the pan -- or will it suffer the fate of similarly brilliant ideas in the past that soon fizzled out? I remember commenting elsewhere on an equally exciting development in May 2002, about potential exports of armyworms. An official of the Tanzania Chamber of Commerce Vitalis Meshack, told the Chamber's 2002 AGM in Kisarawe district that he had secured a market for army worms in China, Japan and Korea. Considered a delicacy in the Far East, the worms fetched $1 a kilo, about five times the producer price for robusta coffee, cotton and cashew nuts at that time. Meshack called upon Tanzanians to take up the worm business, expressing readiness to share details of the export potential free-of-charge. With a price like that, it is surprising that Tanzanians did not take up armyworms farming in earnest, abandoning the traditional cash crops to the heavily subsidised farmers abroad! Not only would this earn sorely needed hard currency, we would also get rid of another pest that regularly appears in destructive swarms. I remarked at the time that the Meshack proposal could not have come at a more opportune time for Tanzania's beleaguered economy in general, and agriculture in particular. Tanzania was perforce shepherded by its development partners into adopting a market economy more than a decade earlier. Consequently, Dar embarked on economic liberalisation that did not spare agriculture. However, most of the measures were half-baked and half-hearted. If the intention was to improve the lot of farmers, this has not been achieved in more than a generation of reforms. Hence the frantic quest for other income-generating areas, such as exotic exports. If army worms were exportable, why not quelea-quelea, I remember thinking wishfully, a wish that seems to have now been realised. Or hasn't it? Could someone out there please update us on the Meshack armyworms business? And, also assure us that the barbecue thinking business is not just another economic mirage? Enditem