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Improved vegetable technologies validated through the World Vegetable Center (WorldVeg)–Africa RISING collaboration were the centre of attraction at the first-ever Tanzania Agribusiness Forum 2020 event held on 27–28 February at the Julius Nyerere International Convention Centre (JNICC) in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

The two-day conference cum agri-business exhibition, which was themed ‘Improving Agriculture and Livestock Productivity for Industrial Development,’ attracted upwards of a thousand participants from the government, private, public and non-governmental sectors within Tanzania.

Visitors to the WorldVeg-Africa RISING exhibition stand got a chance to learn about accessing improved vegetable variety seeds for tomatoes, amaranth, African nightshade, and the Ethiopian mustard; how to grow these improved varieties and their potential yields, the market value and trends for vegetables, proper post-harvest handling techniques, how to successfully integrate vegetable and legumes in mixed farming set-ups as well as how to prepare mouth-watering local recipes for better family nutritional outcomes.

Since 2013, Africa RISING and the WorldVeg Center have worked together in seven districts across Tanzania to promote vegetable farming as a complementary agricultural activity in the largely maize-dominated farming systems.

Scolastica Mgaya, one of the visitors to the WorldVeg-Africa RISING stand, left the event convinced about the potential for commercial production of vegetables like amaranth and the African nightshade because of their marketability in Tanzania. While for other visitors like Lisa Mbyaku and Mwasi Nyambinu, it was the delicious vegetable recipes on display that caught their attention owing to their work as food restaurant owners in Dar es Salaam. They both said that they would readily incorporate the pumpkin soup recipe and other vegetable cookouts in the menus at the respective restaurants.