Working Paper 034 Tanzania’s ‘rice bowl’: Production success, scarcity persistence and rent seeking in the East African Community Antonio Andreoni,1 Deograsias Mushi2 and Ole Therkildsen3 January 2021 1 UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose, University College London 2 School of Economics, University of Dar es Salaam 3 Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS) All correspondence to Dr Antonio Andreoni (
[email protected]) Tanzania’s ‘rice bowl’: Production success, scarcity persistence and rent seeking in the East African Community Contents Acronyms and abbreviations 3 Acknowledgements 3 Executive summary 4 1. Introduction 6 2. The political logic of ‘scarcity’ and rent-seeking: why not all crops are the same 8 3. Scarcity in rice: production, trade and regulation 12 3.1. Rice scarcity in the EAC since the 2000s 12 3.2. Rapid increases in production 13 3.3. Rice processing and marketing 16 3.4. Official imports and exports 18 3.5. Trade informality and contradictory regimes 19 4. Rent-seeking processes: the political economies of rice 24 4.1. Rent-seeking in the value chain 24 4.2. Mis-invoicing 27 4.3. Transit, exports and cross-border trade 29 4.4. Puzzling yet persistent price trends 32 4.5. Shifting patterns of rice trade and rent-seeking 33 5. Formalising trade through collective action: an anti-corruption proposal from Tanzania to the EAC 36 6. References 40 1 Tanzania’s ‘rice bowl’: Production success, scarcity persistence and rent seeking in the East African Community Figures Figure 1. The Tanzania ‘rice bowl’ 9 Figure 2.