Most of the livestock products are for domestic market. Important exports are live animals, hides and skins. This sub-sector needs to be developed particularly in the dairy farming and its products, meat processing to meet the domestic demand and attract traders from abroad.

But livestock keepers complain that despite hard work to keep huge livestock, their earning remain small and discouraging. Out of the subsector's contribution to GDP, about 40 percent originates from beef production, 30 percent from Milk production and another 30 percent from poultry and small stock production.

‘Most of the livestock keepers in the country are small farmers with big numbers of animals. Unfortunately what they get is little’, said Mr Jeremiah Temu, cattle keeper and an official from livestock department at Pugu- Dar es Salaam livestock market attributing the problem to lack of processing industry.

He pointed out that Tanzania 's animals feed on natural vegetable material which makes ‘the meat tasty,’ and that if meat processing industry would be established, farmers could earn more money.

Small livestock traders in many markets in the Dar es Salaam commercial of Tanzania also raised similar concerns about lack of reliable customers, lack of loans, and discrepancy of tax in the livestock business.

‘We have a problem of shortage of customers, mainly from abroad. We normally receive few customers from Comoro Islands . We appeal to government to help advertise our livestock’, said Mr Josephat Warioba at the Pugu market.

Mr Fadhil Maige, a trader, raised the issue of inconsistency in taxation, ‘while some parts of Dar es Salaam such as Ilala municipal livestock trading tax is 1,250/= per day, in Kinondoni municipal we pay 1,500/=. We ask the authorities to reduce the tax.’

Maige also complained that there clear discrimination in giving out loans, small livestock keepers are ignored, ‘because we have small investment. Therefore the few big farmers are trusted and given loans’

He said that discrimination and bureaucracy in giving loans also raises concerns about corruption, ‘probably the big farmers' offers 'kitu kidogo' (gifts) for easy access to loans.
Ms Agnes Maiga , the Pugu- livestock market manager said that the market receives cattle from the main livestock producing regions of Shinyanga, Dodoma , Tabora, Singida, and Mwanza, delivered by trucks daily at an average of 400-500 herds of cattle.

She adds: ‘The market also receives sheep and goats from the areas and had a capacity of holding 3,000 sheep and Goats at a time. The animals are health inspected, graded to render livestock marketing information services, issue traders permit, record keeping, and control of revenues[market fees and movement fees].’

In efforts to improve the business, the manager said that her management was planning to strengthen livestock information system for traders to know the price of other market, and educate traders on livestock trading business to attract customers from abroad.

The livestock numbers in Tanzania have been increasing steadily (ranking third in Africa ) in recent decades at roughly the same rate as the human population growth. Out of 3.7 million households in the country, 3 percent are pastoralists and 7 percent are agro-pastoralists.

The livestock sub-sector generates over one-quarter of agricultural GDP. Cattle are dominant species, they account for about 75 percent of total livestock production, there are sheep and goats, poultry, and the pigs. Approximately 99 percent of livestock sub-sector belongs to traditional (small) owners, with big ranches and dairy farms constituting the remaining 1 percent.