The Citizen (Dar es Salaam)
Mkinga Mkinga
16 May 2008
The recent agro-industry meeting held in Dar es Salaam had small entrepreneurs exchanging contacts with international traders and would soon start selling commodities abroad.
Ms Dina Bina, the Tanzania Women's Chamber of Commerce chairperson said local traders obtained an opportunity to show and sell their goods during the one week meeting.
"Now Tanzanian traders may start getting orders from different states, as they exchanged business contacts during the five day meeting," she said, noting that this is now a new hope for small entrepreneurs.
Mr Flor Healy, the agro-industry meeting team leader and quality control specialist, said the meeting had impressive results as the meeting managed to draw about 483 participants from the Sadc zone, the European Union, and from elsewhere.
"Agro Industry 2008 proved to be a highly successful business to business forum, with the ambition of achieving significant and sustainable results for business seeking participants," he affirmed.
As the forum's host, Tanzania can be proud of its achievement in hosting Agro Industry 2008 as a major high profile success.
The event has established that Tanzania is an attractive country, he said.
As the meeting was over, it is important to ensure that there is follow up activity within the SADC region to ensure that potential partnerships are actually established in each of the SADC members, the specialist noted.
He also advised the government to form a taskforce to ensure coordinated followup to Agro Industry 2008, starting with a focus on ensuring that potential partnerships struck between Tanzania businesspersons and international business partners obtain the support needed.
"This focus will result in greater wealth creation, increased employment opportunities and enhanced technology transfer over time if there is followup support and assistance for these important enterprise efforts," said Healy.
The event was funded by the European Union-SADC Investment Promotion Programme to the tune of euro 1.3 million to organise and host.
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