Asian Journal of Economics, Business and Accounting

Cassava (Manihot esculenta Crantz) has become increasingly important for food security and rural livelihoods in Tanzania, with growing recognition as a valuable traded commodity across the East African region. Although Tanzania ranks among Africa's top cassava producers, there remains surprisingly limited empirical evidence documenting the country's long-term export performance and future trade prospects. This study analyses Tanzania's cassava net export performance from 1961 to 2024 and projects future trends through 2030 using time series econometric methods. We compiled secondary annual data from the FAOSTAT database (1961–2013) and Tanzania Revenue Authority customs records (2014–2024). Historical trade patterns were examined across four distinct policy regimes through descriptive statistics and trend analysis, while the Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average (ARIMA) modelling approach was employed for forecasting purposes. We tested the stationarity of the net export series using the Augmented Dickey–Fuller procedure and selected the optimal model based on Akaike and  Bayesian Information Criteria. Our findings reveal that Tanzania sustained a positive cassava trade balance in 63 of 64 years, with net exports growing markedly during the post-liberalisation and modern growth periods. The ARIMA (2,1,0) model emerged as the best-fitting specification, forecasting stabilisation of net exports at approximately 44,000 to 46,000 metric tons per year from 2025 to 2030, though with progressively wider confidence intervals indicating increasing uncertainty. The evidence points to a fundamental transformation of Tanzania's cassava sector from a minimal exporter to a substantial regional supplier. The study concludes that maintaining export momentum will necessitate strategic policy interventions, notably strengthening export infrastructure, facilitating regional trade flows, encouraging value-added processing at an industrial scale, and ensuring domestic food security safeguards as cassava exports continue expanding.