Climate & sustainability

Rainfall is bimodal in the Lake Victoria basin, the north-eastern highlands and the northern coast, with short rains from October to December and long rains from March to May, and unimodal from November to April or May in the south, centre and west¹. More than 80% of agriculture is rain-fed². ERA5 data show 433.8 mm of rain in October–December 2023, 37% above the 1991–2020 average for those months, and 171.3 mm in the same months of 2021 (own calculations)³.

The 2021/22 seasons were dry in the north, and an IFRC operation recorded 2.1 million people affected by food insecurity⁴. In the El Niño season of 2023/24, a mudslide from Mount Hanang on 3 December 2023 killed 89 people in Manyara, and on 25 April 2024 the Prime Minister reported 155 deaths from rains and floods since January 2024, with 76,700 hectares of farmland flooded in Pwani and Morogoro regions⁵⁶. In January 2026 drought affected about a third of cropland in Dodoma and Mbeya⁷. In its outlook for the October–December 2026 season, the Tanzania Meteorological Authority expected above-normal to normal October–December rains in most bimodal areas under a strong El Niño, with a risk of floods affecting crops⁸.

The country-average temperature was 22.86 °C in 1991–2020 against 22.36 °C in 1961–1990 on CRU data (own calculations), and in the ERA5 series 2017, 2023 and 2019 were the warmest years since 1950¹⁴¹⁵. CMIP6 models project median warming of 1.32 °C by 2040–2059 under an intermediate scenario and 1.77 °C under high emissions, rising to 2.15 °C and 4.02 °C by 2080–2099, relative to 1995–2014⁹. Under high emissions the number of days above 35 °C rises by 54 a year by the end of the century¹⁷. Median rainfall projections show small increases, but the model range includes drier outcomes⁹. The National Climate Change Response Strategy projects national food production to fall by 8–13% by 2050¹.

The Ministry of Agriculture reported 727,281 hectares under irrigation on the Mainland in 2023/24, and the National Irrigation Policy of 2010 estimated irrigation potential at 29.4 million hectares¹⁸¹⁹²⁰. Agriculture accounted for 89.4% of freshwater withdrawals in the latest World Bank estimate, a value repeated in the series for every year from 2010 to 2022, and renewable internal freshwater resources fell to 1,298 cubic metres per person in 2022²¹²². The World Bank's Country Climate and Development Report of December 2024 finds that without action climate change could reduce growth by up to 4% by 2050²³.

On Climate Watch data agriculture emitted 76.8 Mt CO2-equivalent in 2023, 62.5% of the 122.9 Mt emitted excluding land use, and land use and forestry added 67.8 Mt¹¹. FAOSTAT attributes 42.0 Mt to enteric fermentation and 19.2 Mt to manure left on pasture, together 79.7% of agricultural emissions (own calculation)²⁴. Forest area fell from 50.1 million hectares in 2010 to 43.4 million in 2025¹⁰.

Tanzania's updated NDC of July 2021 commits to reduce emissions by 30–35% relative to business as usual by 2030, about 138–153 Mt CO2-equivalent, and states that implementation depends on international support²⁵. It costs implementation at US$19.23 billion and lists climate-smart agriculture and crop insurance for smallholders among adaptation measures²⁵. The National Adaptation Plan of November 2025 costs 36 programmes at US$37 billion, including US$6.1 billion for Mainland agriculture². The carbon trading regulations of 2022 and the Environmental Management (Amendment) Act of 2025, which created a National Carbon Monitoring Centre, govern carbon projects²⁶²⁷. The 2022 regulations were amended in 2023, and the official text of the amendment was not available, so the revenue shares shown in the table are those of the regulations as made²⁶.