The 13th World Conference on Tobacco OR Health

Objective: Years of growing tobacco in Tabora Region where 60 per cent of Tanzania's tobacco is grown, has now shown its toll.

The Miombo forests that used to cover the area are now reduced as tobacco growers had cut them to expand fields and used cut down trees in curing tobacco leaves.

Production of honey whose ingredients, the nectar, is taken by bees from flowers of Miombo forest trees, has also dropped. Rainfall has decreased and desertification is in progress.

Methods: After seeing this destruction and having been born there, I started researching on what can be done by asking the tobacco growers on the problem. The outcome of my research was presentation of a paper at the Africa Conference on Tobacco or Health in Harare, Zimbabwe in 1993 and attending the World Conference on Tobacco or Health in Paris in 1994.

Results: Consequently I, together with Peter Heller, produced a 58-minute documentary film describing the destruction brought about by tobacco growing and machinations of tobacco multinationals buying tobacco in Tanzania and those in Germany.

Tobacco growers in that area are ready to change to alternative crops such as sunflower, groundnuts, paprika, vines and water melons that thrive well in the region.

Following this, I am in the process of forming a Non Governmental Organisation to help tobacco growers change to alternative crops and also re-plant indigenous trees that they had earlier cut down.