58 NEW INVESTMENTS
The Tanzania Investment Promotion Centre (TIPC) had approved 58 projects worth Shs 19,300 million (US$ 98.5 million) by the end of December 1990 according to the AFRICAN ECONOMIC DIGEST (February 18, 1991). The TlPC had received 150 investment proposals and 310 investment enquiries since it s establishment in July 1990. Of the total velue of projects approved foreign sources will invest US$ 65.0 million.
BACK TO NORMAL AT THE UNIVERSITY
‘The University of Dar es Salaam – seven months after its closure by the Government – is back in business, hoisting its academic flag as it greets the new year.’ So began an article in the February issue of AFRICA EVENTS. The article went on: But neither the students, the lecturers nor the Government seem satisfied. The students came back minus 13 of their number (the Government expelled the 13 who had either been student leaders or had been the most vocal in the meetings during the crisis; eight other students were severely reprimanded); the lecturers were promised an incentive package which they have yet to see; the Government botched up the house-cleaning job by expelling the wrong students. The Mroso Commission of Enquiry (Bulletin No 38) named after its chairman, a High Court Judge, had completely exonerated the students. Some lecturers who proved ‘troublesome’ during the crisis were said to have been offered lucrative jobs outside the university. ‘However’, the article concluded, ‘the university seems to be going about its business, all calm and academic’.
RATIONALISATION AT DAR ES SALAAM PORT
In a major feature on road and rail transport in Africa the March 18 issue of the AFRICA ECONOMIC DIGEST described in some detail a new 12- point plan drawn up by the Tanzania Harbours Authority (THA) and the Tanzania-Zambia Railway Authority (TAZARA) to streamline operations in the port of Dar es Salaam and on the TAZARA railway. Topping the list of improvement measures is the stoppage of demurrage or storage charges once clients have paid freight and port Charges. Secondly, once payments have been made, the process of planning the supply of wagons and loading equipment is done by TAZARA and THA respectively and customers will not have to simply wait for wagons and equipment to become available as in the past. Similarly, checking by the Customs Department will in future be done simultaneously as cargo is being loaded and not, as previously, before the loading has taken place.
DANTAN
KUMEKUCHA, the journal of the Denmark Tanzania Associati on (DANTAN ) published in its March 1991 issue the full text of the article headed ‘A Letter from Iceland’ published in Bulletin No 38. The Editor of Kumekucha wrote that it was always interesting to see how one is perceived ‘by the world around us – and, in this case, through the spectacles of our English sister organisation. ‘
HEALTHY GOATS, HEALTHY INCOMES
Under this heading the March 1991 issue of BRITISH OVERSEAS DEVELOPMENT wrote about an ODA Goat Extension Project in the Newala District near the border with Mozambique. Researchers from Edinburgh University have recently visited the area to help farmers raise goat s more successfully than at present. One development has been the building of improved goat houses which not only protect the goat s better from hyenas and leopards but also keep them dry in the wet season, reducing the risk of foot rot. The goats have been given drugs to get rid of any parasitic worms infesting them and researchers and farmers have worked on improved methods of hoof trimming.
MALARIA GETTING WORSE
Medical researchers in Tanzania, according to a recent issue of AFRICA HEALTH MARKETLETTER, say the malaria situation is getting worse. Whereas, in the past, urban areas and highlands were regarded as free from malaria that concept has now been quashed. A study by the National Institute for Medical Research has stated that the main reasons for failure in malaria control in urban areas include financial, managerial, personnel and administrative constraints. Environmental degradation has been blamed for the upsurge in malaria in the Eastern Usambara mountains. A vector control Training Centre has been set up in Tanga.
On the subject of malaria parasite resistance the NIMR states that, provided a full dose is taken, chloroquine is still effective in treating most malaria attacks. Camoquine appears to clear the parasite better than chloroquine, although, on follow-up, parasites may reappear. Resistance to Fansidar is said to be extremely rare.
Meanwhile, according to the AFRICA ECONOMIC DIGEST (February 25) the Third Phase of the Malaria Control Project between the Governments of Japan and Tanzania was signed on February 11th. The US$ 2.34 million project is aimed at reducing malaria prevalence and improving environmental conditions and health education.
RECORD COFFFEE EXPORTS
The AFRICA ECONOMIC DIGEST (March 18, 1991) quoted the Tanzania Coffee Marketing Board as stating that the highest coffee exports in five years were achieved in the first four months of the 1990/91 coffee season when 326,075 bags of clean coffee were sold compared with 190,448 sold in the same period in the previous year. The International Coffee Organisation has reported that, during the first two months of the season (October-November last year), Tanzania’s coffee exports recorded the highest increase, compared to the previous two years, of all mild arabica coffee producers in the world.
STRENGTHENING THE PETROLEUM DISTRIBUTION SYSTEM
WORLD BANK NEWS reports that a US$ 44 million IDA Credit recently made to Tanzania will help the Government to finance improvements to the petroleum distribution system so that businesses, farms and households in outlying areas will have better access to a reliable supply of petroleum products. Petroleum storage depots will be constructed, rail transport will be upgraded (the cost of using rail transport is about three times less then the present practice of using mainly heavy trailer trucks which damage the roads) an off-shore terminal will be built at Tanga and other distribution facilit1es will be developed. But one of the main contributions of the project will be to encourage the return of the private sector in petroleum distribution.
Years of neglect are said to have left a crumbling petroleum distribution system with little incentive for local subsidiaries of international oil companies to maintain or expand their facilities, of rundown roads, shortages of spare parts, dilapidated petrol stations and retail outlets and inadequate storage facilities. As a result, fuel shortages are common in Tanzania’s agricultural regions and in land cities and this is acting as a constraint on increasing agricultural production. The article went on to say that, although the prospects are good for finding oil in the Rift Valley and in the coastal basins, none has been discovered yet. In the meantime the country must import all of the crude oil needed.
IMPORTS OF BIRDS
Reporting on a campaign to ban the import into UK of exotic wild birds the SUNDAY TIMES (May 19, 1991) noted the sequel to the case which followed the death through suffocation of more than 1,000 birds, including flamingos, which were found dead on arrival in London from Dar es Salaam. The British government was said to have subsequently suspended imports of birds from Tanzania after the government there refused to allow British Ministry of Agriculture officials to inspect conditions in Dar. At a court hearing the airline carrying the birds, KLM, was fined £20,000.
PROPPING UP THE CLOVE PRICE
News from Indonesia in a recent issue of the INTERNATIONAL HERALD TRIBUNE will cause further anxiety to the vital clove industry of Zanzibar devastated by the fall in prices. According to the article, Indonesian state banks have earmarked up to US$ 250 million to help boost local clove prices. A newly established Clove Support and Marketing Board has been given the monopoly to buy cloves from village cooperatives and sell them. mostly to makers of pungent, clove-flavoured Cigarettes.
200,000 BOTTLES PER DAY
Once production starts on a new production line at Tanzania Breweries it would be able to bottle 8,000 crates of 25 bottles each per day, enough to meet increasing beer demand in Dar es Salaam and neighbouring regions, according to the April 1 issue of the AFRICA ECONOMIC DIGEST. It is hoped that the beer brewed on the new line will replace Pilsner beer imported from Kenya. A second bottling plant was due to become operational by the end of April 1991. The cost of the new plants, imported from Czechoslovakia. was US$ 3.8 million. Due to severe leakages of filling machines in the old bottling plants the Breweries were losing about 20% of their output worth the equivalent of US$ 24.7 million annually.
SOUTH AFRICA AND TANZANIA
According to the French language magazine LA LETTRE DE L’OCEAN INDIEN (21/1/91) several South African businessmen have been visiting Tanzania recently to study the possibility of commercial exchanges between the two countries. Some of them have been authorised to invest in Tanzania but no official publicity has been given to this decision. Already numerous South African products are circulating in Tanzania. The Dar es Salaam Daily News was said to have reported that shops in Mbeya were ‘regorgaient’ with South African products. BMW and Mercedes cars assembled in South Africa were said to be in use in Dar es Salaam and the parastatal TAMEX in association with De Beers of South Africa was said to have concluded an agreement for diamond exploration near to Lake Victoria.
PRIVATE TUITION
AFRICA EVENTS (April 1991) has described the new government restriction on private tuition of school children as ‘bizarre’. The Tanzanian Minister of Education recently ruled that teachers must not hold tuition sessions after school hours in return for a fee. The Minister bases his argument on egalitarianism. In his view children whose parents are too poor to apply for extra lessons will be at a disadvantage and will be no match for their mates from more privileged homes. But, writes AFRICA EVENTS, this is a complex problem the Minister has sought to overcome with a simple solution.
Some students have to trudge five miles to school, are not sure to get a square meal when they get back home, have no privacy to do their homework and might have to miss evening study because their parents expect them to fetch water. Other students are dropped at school in a family car, have a nice working environment at home for private study and are never asked to do house chores because there are servants.
The article goes on: ‘Much as one might sympathise with the Minister’s concern for equality in the classroom, any effort on his part to tackle the larger question of inequality in society is bound to fly in the face of the new official mood for individual enterprise. The Leadership Code, a cornerstone of the Arusha Declaration, the ideological anchor of social and economic policy since independence, has just been scrapped. Is the Minister of Education on the same wavelength as the bigwigs in the ruling party and the Cabinet? ….
Getting the schools better equipped, improving the teacher/pupil ratio and motivating teachers would be a far more positive stab at the core (of the educational problem) than the nit picking and scratching on the periphery that he is currently tied down to’.
CHEAP SUITS
BUSINESS TRAVELLER has been advising its readers on where they can find
the most reasonably priced mens’ suits. Prices were given in US dollars and the average for UK was said to be $290. Tanzania came out as the second lowest (Ghana was the lowest). It was stated that a suit can be bought in Tanzania for $80. The highest priced suits were in Japan – $608 .
Tanzania also received prominence when it was found to be the cheapest place (36 countries were included in the sample) for the suit to be dry-cleaned. Taking 100 as the price of dry cleaning in Britain, the cost in Tanzania was estimated to be 16.5. Switzerland was the most expensive at 135.
WHO PAYS THE PIPER?
In issue no 37 of this Bullet in, under the heading ‘Tanzania in the Media’ we quoted from an article in AFRICA EVENTS under the heading ‘Plenty of Sulk, Little Bulk’ referring to dissident Tanzanian political groups in London.
In its February 1991 issue AFRICA EVENTS published a rejoinder which it stated had been published earlier in the September issue of Zanzibar Newsletter, an organ of the UK-based Zanzibar Organisation. The rejoinder stated that frivolity should not be a characteristic of a periodical claiming to report on events with a degree of seriousness. It went on ‘It is said that “who pays the piper calls the tune” and the magazine has of late been obviously extra cautious trying to avoid treading on the corns of the waning Mwalimu … . the subscription arrears blocked in Dar es Salaam have a sobering effect on Journalistic objectivity …. it is deplorable to see the first come-together of various political groupings dedicated to liberate Tanzania from a thirty-year dictatorship (being ridiculed) …. unless of course it is the writer’s intention to maintain the status quo in Tanzania when the whole world is moving towards freedom and progress …. the Tanzania Democratic Front has two aims: the democratisation of Tanzania and the liberation of Zanzibar . . . . pouring petty journalese cynicism on these laudable aims serves only to perpetuate dictatorship in Tanzania and to prolong the agony of occupation in Zanzibar ‘.
A NEW INTERNATIOINAL TELEPHONE EXCHANGE
Tanzania Posts and Telecommunications Corporation has announced that a US$ 6.0 million international telephone exchange, which will connect Tanzania with the outside world, began on February 12th 1991. This was stated in the March 4 issue of t he AFRICA ECONOMIC DIGEST. The new exchange has a capacity of 2,000 trunks compared with the previous capacity of 650.
ALL THE TRAPPINGS OF AN AMERICAN ELECTION CAMPAIGN
‘The bunting is out, the cheerleaders sing and the dirt roads have been specially graded’ . So began an article in the London TIMES (May 20, 1991) reporting on the visit to a project they are sponsoring at Mareu in the foothills of Mount Kilimanjaro by former President Jimmy Carter, father of the Green Revolution, 77-year old Dr Norman Borlaug and former Nigerian President Obasanjo who has submitted his candidacy for the post of Secretary General of the United Nations. Finance for the project comes from wealthy Japanese philanthropist Ryoichi Sasakawa.
The project’s implementation was delayed for three years until the government was able to guarantee fertiliser supplies and a change in its agricultural pricing policy. Starting with 67 management training plots in 1989 the project now administers 4,286 in 78 villages in the area around Mareu. Each participating farmer has a demonstration plot of one acre and yields up to 12 to 28 bags of maize are being achieved compared with a local average of 4 to 8 bags. The idea is for other farmers to copy the success of the demonstration plots.
BWANA MSA
‘Zanzibar has just lost one of the greatest treasures in the literary world. Few are those amongst Swahili readers who do not know of Bwana Mohamed Said Abdalla, Monsieur MSA – which is also the name of the main character in his crime novels’. So reported URAFIKI TANZANIA in its January-March 1991 issue. ‘The two personalities resembled each other and both were always found smoking their pipes…. Monsieur MSA had a remarkable ability in handling words and through his many books his name will live forever.’
TANZANIA TRIUMPHANT
This was the first time in over 15 years that any Tanzanian soccer team be it at national or club level had brought home some sort of silverware to the soccer-mad Tanzanians. So began AFRICA EVENTS’ account of the triumph of Tanzania in the East and Central Club Championship. It was the famous Simba Sports Club of Dar es Salaam that was crowned king of club soccer in East and Central Africa when they trounced the much feared Sports Club Ville of Uganda 3-0. Simba were the first winners of the trophy, way back in 1974, in an era when they provided strong rivalry to the other well known team Young African. Would, asked Africe Events, Simba’s win usher in a new ere of success for Tanzanian soccer?