By Savithri Rodrigo
Dodoma, Tanzania (Commonwealth Union)_The large numbers of football fans who converged on Qatar for the World Cup in December had a direct impact on Tanzania’s meat exports, which soared to unprecedented levels. This was good news for Tanzania which saw the value of its meat exports drop in October from USD 3.8 million to USD 2.9 million in the same period the year before, primarily due to drought effecting the quality of meat. While the meat of cattle and goats are affected in different ways during drought, the impact on goat meat wasn’t as pronounced as other types of meat.
The World Cup boosted demand for meat in Qatar, which quickly scaled the height to become Tanzania’s biggest market primarily with demand for goat and mutton. However, Tanzania could have significantly increased its exports during the World Cup if there were better transport links between the country and Qatar.
With Qatar reducing frequencies of its airline network to accommodate the increasing numbers of fans coming in to Qatar, it launched a more point-to-point model, which impacted supplies from neighbouring regions to some extent. Tanzania had to cope with the slashes in frequencies which meant getting the meat to market proved challenging.
As of May 2022, the total number of cattle in Tanzania was counted at 35.3 million, while it was home to a total of 25.6 million goats. There are 92.8 million chickens and 8.8 million sheep to add to the total number of heads of livestock Tanzania has within the country. Tanzania has plans to increase exports to 16,000 tons annually by 2026.
