Times Of Swaziland: ESWATINI TO EXPLORE CASSAVA TO SUBSTITUTE WHEAT IMPORTS

ESWATINI TO EXPLORE CASSAVA TO SUBSTITUTE WHEAT IMPORTS
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Mhlengi Magongo on 24/11/2022 06:37:00


MBABANE – Imports are not beneficiary to Eswatini as they do not contribute to
the economy and businesses locally.
Wheat is imported in large quantities in Eswatini, and researchers have advise
the private sector and government to explore the use of cassava in order to
substitute wheat imports. Minister of Economic Planning and Development Dr Tambo
Gina said government needed to support entities such as the Eswatini Economic
Policy Analysis and Research Centre (ESEPARC), for analytical evidence that
would inform public policy. Speaking during a panel discussion at the IMF
Regional Economic Outlook session held at the Royal Swazi Spa Convention Centre,
the minister said there was a need for experts who would objectively analyse
government policies and programmes so as to inform policymakers’ decisions.
Meanwhile, consensus among the new government and experts was that the onus was
on the private sector to turn the country’s economic fortunes around. ESEPARC
Executive Director Dr Thula Sizwe Dlamini said priority should be on higher
education, particularly because the country’s future lied in the youth. He
noted that the revised national development strategy (NDS) talked to the
benefits of investments in education accruing to the individual, hence the need
to revisit the NDS, as the benefits of Eswatini’s investments in education
accrued to the country as a whole.
“If you look at issues of globalisation and how these have affected developing
countries like ours, there certainly is a need for government to upskill and
re-skill people,” he said. “We cannot discuss higher education without
talking about the need to channel more resources into research and development,
which is like the laboratory for future growth.
Infrastructure
If you look at Eswatini’s current spending on research and development, it
amounts to 0.26 per cent of GDP and looking at the economic infrastructure for
commercialising research and development outputs that we have as a country,
certainly we need to increase our investment in research and development to one
per cent of GDP.” Dlamini advised Eswatini to prioritise research and
development in line with the country’s developmental aspirations, adding that
prioritisation should be in line with latest global developments that had seen
the legalisation and commercialisation of crops deemed illegal in yesteryears.
He also noted that there were opportunities to introduce cash crops that would
help the country trap money in the economy, such as cassava to substitute wheat
imports. He pointed out that the private sector could lead by introducing the
necessary technologies needed to produce and mill cassava, thus creating more
jobs and forcing money to circulate within the economy. “There is also an
opportunity in the production of industrial hemp, which produces a lot of fibre
using far less water than our current sources of fibre. There are also
opportunities in the production of medicinal cannabis; it just requires
channelling resources and finding a way of structuring the market such that it
is not open to abuse,” he said.