In southern Tanzania, cashew orchards stretch for miles. From Mtwara to Lindi, trees heavy with nuts form the backbone of a regional economy that sustains hundreds of thousands of families. By 2024/25, the south produced 410,000 tonnes of cashews, up from 310,000 tonnes just the year before. The government has set its sights even higher: 700,000 tonnes by 2025/26, and one million by 2030.
Yet this boom hides a familiar problem. Roads, or the lack of them, stand between farmers and prosperity. Trucks loaded with cashews creep along rutted gravel, sometimes taking days to reach ginneries or ports. In the rainy season, stretches of feeder road turn to mud, isolating villages altogether. For farmers, a record harvest does not guarantee record earnings. Without reliable roads, Tanzania risks being rich in cashews but poor in returns.
Cashews as the Southern Lifeline
Cashews are more than a crop in southern Tanzania; they are the region’s lifeline. They employ hundreds of thousands of smallholder farmers and form one of the country’s most important sources of foreign exchange. In 2024/25, raw cashew exports earned over TSh 1.52 trillion (about US$564 million), cementing Tanzania’s place among the world’s top five producers.
The demand is strong. European buyers increased their cashew imports by 5.5% in early 2024, and Tanzania secured a fresh contract to supply cashews to EU markets. But access to these buyers depends on more than orchards and contracts; it depends on the roads that carry nuts from farms in Tandahimba or Newala to warehouses in Mtwara, and from there to ships bound for India, Vietnam, or Europe.
Roads are the hidden infrastructure of the cashew trade. Without them, cooperative unions like TANECU and MAMCU struggle to meet export deadlines, and Tanzania’s hard-won market share shrinks.
The Feeder Road Challenge
The weakest link in this supply chain is often the first few kilometres. In Mtwara’s cashew belt, most feeder roads are still earth or gravel, washed out after the first heavy rains. In Tandahimba, farmers describe trucks stuck axle-deep in mud, sometimes abandoned until the road dries. In Newala, some villages remain inaccessible for weeks during peak harvest season, forcing farmers to sell cheaply to middlemen who can reach them by motorbike.
TARURA has made strides, launching feeder-road upgrades and low-cost bridge programs in 2024/25, but demand far outpaces delivery. The government’s priority has been to pave trunk roads along the Mtwara Development Corridor, while the smaller roads that link farms to those highways lag behind. For cashew farmers, that gap is decisive: a feeder road that holds through the rainy season can mean a fair price and timely export; a feeder road that fails means lost income and wasted effort.
The challenge, then, is clear. To turn cashew harvests into national wealth, Tanzania must fix the roads closest to the trees.
The Cost of Poor Roads, From Farmgate to Port
For farmers, the price of a cashew isn’t set only in global markets, it is shaped by the condition of the roads between the orchard and the port. Transport costs in southern Tanzania can swallow 20–30% of the farmgate value of a kilo of cashews. Every pothole adds expense: fuel is burned idling in mud, trucks require costly repairs, and buyers discount delayed or damaged shipments.
The global cashew trade is ruthlessly competitive. Vietnam and India, Tanzania’s main rivals, not only process nuts at scale but also move them quickly along efficient road and port networks. Tanzanian farmers, by contrast, face losses when shipments arrive late to ginneries or miss contracted shipping windows. Even when harvests are strong, weak roads mean exporters cannot always fulfil commitments, undermining credibility with international buyers.
The result is a hidden tax on rural producers. The road itself becomes a middleman, cutting into margins. A better-built feeder road can make as much difference to a farmer’s income as the global price of cashews.
Beyond Cashews, The Broader Export Portfolio
While cashews dominate southern Tanzania’s economy, the roads carry far more. The same trucks that haul sacks of nuts also transport sesame, maize, timber, and fish. Sesame farmers in Lindi face similar struggles: lucrative regional buyers exist, but poor feeder roads mean only part of the crop makes it out at the right time. Timber traders complain of high logistics costs that push up export prices, weakening Tanzania’s edge against Mozambique. Fishermen along the southern coast lose income when roads delay ice and cold-storage trucks.
Improving cashew roads, therefore, is not just about one crop. It is about unlocking a whole southern trade portfolio. A feeder road that allows cashews to move efficiently also ensures sesame isn’t stranded, timber doesn’t spoil on the roadside, and maize gets to local markets. The impact multiplies across value chains, making rural roads one of the highest-return investments in the south.
The Corridor Connection
These challenges and opportunities now sit within a larger framework: the Mtwara Development Corridor. The completion of the 66 km Mbinga–Mbamba Bay road in 2024 stitched new territory into the network, while the Mbamba Bay Port project (to be finished by 2026) promises to open Lake Nyasa as a gateway for trade with Malawi and beyond. Along the coast, the Dar–Lindi–Mtwara trunk has been upgraded, cutting journey times from more than 12 hours to under 8.
For cashew exporters, this means choices. Instead of relying solely on Dar es Salaam’s congested port, exporters can use Mtwara or, soon, Mbamba Bay. But these larger arteries only matter if the small feeder roads deliver the nuts to them. The corridor can move cargo across borders, but without reliable links from farms to highways, southern produce risks staying stuck at the source.
The corridor, then, is not just an international trade strategy. It is a test of whether Tanzania can connect the smallest farmer in Tandahimba to the global market.
The Human Side, Farmers on the Margin
Behind every export statistic is a farmer weighing risk against reward. In Newala, a family with three acres of cashew trees can harvest several tonnes in a good year. But without a reliable road, they may sell at half price to middlemen who arrive with motorbikes before the trucks dare to enter. The difference between a gravel track and an all-weather feeder road can mean school fees paid or deferred, meals secured or skipped.
For others, the frustration is watching opportunity slip away. A farmer in Tandahimba recalls losing nearly a third of his crop when trucks got stuck for days in the rains. By the time buyers reached him, the nuts had deteriorated, and the price plummeted. “We grow wealth,” he said, “but the road steals it.”
These stories reveal the human core of Tanzania’s cashew challenge. Farmers have responded to government calls to expand orchards, boosting output year after year. Yet without matching investment in rural roads, their gains are diluted. It is not just exports that suffer, it is the dignity of smallholders whose hard work fails to translate into fair returns.
Roads Are the Real Export Strategy
The south’s cashew boom has been one of Tanzania’s success stories of the past decade. Production has climbed, global contracts have expanded, and new corridors are being paved to link the region to markets. But the most important export infrastructure remains the most overlooked: the feeder road from the tree to the truck.
Trade agreements with Europe or Asia matter little if nuts can’t reach port on time. Processing plants and ginneries depend on steady, predictable flows, which only roads can guarantee. If Tanzania wants its cashew sector to sustain growth and hit its ambitious 2030 targets, the solution is clear: roads first, deals second.
In the end, cashews may be the south’s lifeblood, but roads are its arteries. Without them, wealth clots at the source. With them, farmers, families, and the nation stand to reap the full harvest of their labour.
