Global horticultural value chains, labour and poverty in Tanzania

This paper focuses on the effects of emerging global horticultural value chains on labour, rural poverty and inequality in Tanzania, framing the phenomenon in the wider process of socio-economic change after the introduction of neo-liberal reform and the latest agro-transformation policies. While the few empirical studies in Sub Saharan Africa (SSA) have focused almost exclusively on formal labour in foreign companies, this article takes into consideration also informal wage labour. The article is based on 6-months of fieldwork in the northern highlands, as part of a wider research project on contract farming and wage labour in the export-oriented horticultural industry. With regards to labourers, a total of 96 in-depth interviews and 5 focus group discussions were undertaken with formal and informal workers; 96 questionnaires were administered; and 13 semi-structured interviews were conducted with foreign companies, NGOs and local authorities. The paper highlights the substantial use of informal workers by both foreign companies and Tanzanian contract farmers and emphasises the fundamental importance of looking at the informal labour market in evaluating the impacts of emerging value chains on rural poverty. It concludes that global horticultural value chains in Tanzania have little impact on poverty reduction and reinforce the ongoing processes of social differentiation and labour exploitation.