Illegal trafficking of live tortoises, snakes and lizards is on the rise according to an article in the Guardian: “After finding it difficult to deal with elephant tusks, leopard skins and rhino horns, poachers have now shifted their attention to smaller animals that can be moved in briefcases or sent as mail,” said Theotimos Rwegasira, a senior conservation official. “Last year 300 live tortoises from Tanzania were seized in Hong Kong.” They had been sent via the Post Office’s ordinary mail, something said to have been going on for years.

Mr Rwegasira said that apart from live tortoises and turtles, other creatures targeted by poachers were frogs and their eggs, snakes and lizards. He said there were also insects that were in demand abroad.

Submarine cable
Pemba Island in Zanzibar has been connected to the national power grid through a submarine cable installed in the Indian Ocean from Tanga Region. The project was co-financed by the governments of Tanzania and Norway. The 78-kilometre-long cable replaces three old diesel generators, to ensure reliable electricity supply in the island with much higher capacity and reliability than before. The Leader of the Opposition in Parliament, Hamad Rashid Mohamed, said that Pemba’s connection to the national grid was a step forward in strengthening the Union and the move would bring about better integration between the peoples of Pemba and Unguja – Guardian.

Douglas & Brad Pitt
According to the Citizen, cocoa producers in Mbeya Region will in future selling their produce directly to markets in the US through middlemen. This is the result of efforts by Tanzania’s honourary ‘goodwill ambassador to the US,’ Mr Douglas Pitt (the brother of the actor Brad Pitt) who is linking local farmers to US chocolate factories.

Switching to BP
A few days after five vehicles from the President’s Office broke down due to being filled with adulterated petrol at a Total filling station in Moshi, the government announced that the vehicles would in future be filled at BP filling stations– Mwananchi.

World Cup fever
While some World Cup matches were taking place in South Africa many MP’s skipped sittings of parliament. Deputy Speaker Anne Makinda had to adjourn the House on one occasion as it was virtually empty because most of the MPs were watching the matches on TV channels. Earlier, Speaker Samuel Sitta announced that the House would be dissolved on 20 July and so the sitting hours would have to be extended to evenings and Saturdays – Mwananchi.

Luxury vehicles
Prime Minister Mizengo Pinda has banned importation of luxurious vehicles for government officials. Instead, emphasis would be put on the mechanisation of agriculture – Daily News.

Music School
A community based organisation in the UK, HDO, has launched a School of Music in Dar es Salaam. Professor John Howard from Thames Valley University told reporters that the school would run theoretical and practical classes. Training would start at certificate level and go up to degree level and the school would also record albums to be sent overseas – Majira.

London Congestion Charges
The Guardian, in an article written by Jaston Binala, reported that the Tanzanian Government had made it clear that it did not owe the Greater London Authority (GLA) anything for unpaid traffic congestion charges which the Authority was trying to recover. Foreign Affairs and International Co-operation Permanent Secretary, Sazi Salula, expressed surprise that Tanzania was said to owe £753,520 (for 7,203 fines) for the period since the charge was introduced in 2003 and that a diplomatic vehicle could be charged any form of tax anywhere.

Tanzania is one of 57 diplomatic missions owing more than £100,000. The British government says that the charges are not taxes but are similar to highway tolls.

Some 50 Tanzanians renounced their citizenship and acquired foreign nationality in 2009/2010 as the national laws do not allow dual citizenship, the Guardian on Sunday reported. The Citizenship of Tanzania Amendment Act No. 6 of 1995 prohibits dual and/or multiple citizenship and the time and manner to renounce foreign citizenship (in the case of a person with dual citizenship). Minister for Home Affairs, Lawrence Masha told Parliament in July that the government had decided it was not the right time for dual citizenship and was working on the possibility of establishing permanent residency instead. He added: “The country needs the Diaspora as much as they need the country, more so as their number continues to swell.” But the government has on several occasions recognised Tanzanians in the Diaspora as among the country’s economic development stakeholders, promising to support and facilitate their stay and return from abroad. The Diaspora community remittances last year were estimated at $14 million.

As part of their warm up for the World Cup, in June the Brazilian soccer team with super stars Ricardo Kaka and Robinho came to Dar for a friendly match with ‘Taifa Stars.’ Brazil won the exciting match 5 – 1. At one stage Nageri Kombo, a secondary student stormed onto the pitch and hugged Kaka. Further information had it that before dashing onto the pitch, Kombo handed over his shoes, wallet and mobile phone to a friend, aware that he would be arrested, and he was right! During the incident, Kaka remained calm as other players looked on astonished.

Some controversy surrounded the funding of the game, with some questioning whether the rumoured US$2.5m used to attract the Brazilian team could have been better spent. Finally, Minister of Sports George Mkuchika ended speculation by confirming that the Tanzanian Football Federation (TFF) had raised the money without government support.

After the match Brazilian coach Dunga commented “It was a good test for Brazil because Tanzania is a good team, very well organised.”

Tanzania have appointed a new coach for the national team, Jan Poulsen. The 64 year old Dane has had a promising start, leading the Taifa Stars to a 1-1 draw with Kenya and then a 1-1 draw with the powerful Algerian team at the start of their qualifying campaign for the 2012 Africa Cup of Nations competition, a result which prompted the resignation of the Algerian coach Rabah Saadane. Tanzania last qualified in 1980.

Also in the news were the women’s football team, nicknamed the “Twiga Stars” who have qualified for their first CAF Women’s Championship finals after defeating Ethiopia and Eritrea in June. The team is the subject of a documentary by Nisha Ligon entitled “Twiga Stars: Tanzania’s Soccer Sisters”. Despite a 6-0 defeat by South Africa, the team were upbeat as they started a tour of America in August as part of their preparations for the finals in October. The tour is sponsored by Tanzanian businesswoman Rahma Al-Kharoosi. Other teams that have qualified for the finals are defending champions Equatorial Guinea, Ghana, Nigeria, Algeria, Cameroon, Mali and South Africa.

An Air Tanzania plane, which was carrying 45 passengers from Dar es Salaam, was heading to its final destination in Mwanza on the morning of March 2 when the captain reported trouble to ground control. Visibility was near zero and the captain said he couldn’t land safely and would go to the nearest alternative airport which was Kilimanjaro.

After ten minutes however he changed his mind and decided to land even though he could see a pool of water on the runway. When the plane hit the puddle, the left engine allegedly sucked in water and turned off suddenly, leading him to lose control of the aircraft. The plane then skidded off the runway, causing some panic among the passengers. The plane skidded for nearly a kilometre before coming to rest at around 7:45am. Fire fighters managed to evacuate all 45 passengers and seven crew members, none of whom suffered serious injuries.

The plane suffered serious technical damage that might rule out any possibility of flying again as a passenger aircraft – Guardian on Sunday.

The future of Air Tanzania
It is understood that the government is continuing to look for investors for part of Air Tanzania as it wishes to bring the airline back to full strength so that it can take advantage of growing markets in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Zambia, Malawi and China. In December 155 jobs were cut leaving only 182 on the pay role.

Talks between the government and Chinese company Sonangol International Holdings Ltd, which has a substantial business in the oil, gas and minerals industries and which has started construction of a third terminal at the JK Nyerere International Airport in Dar es Salaam, are said to be well advanced.

Air Tanzania Corporation was privatised in December 2002 in a deal in which South African Airways acquired 49 per cent of the shares but the agreement broke down.

The US firm Celtic Capital Corporation of Texas has also indicated that it would be ready to take over the operations of Air Tanzania. Five firms based in the US, UK and the United Arab Emirates have also shown an interest – The East African.

The Guardian, in article dated February 27 revealed that Tanzanian and American scientists have finally identified the remains of a 7.5-metre-long man-eating crocodile in the Olduvai Gorge. They estimate its age to be 1.8 million years which could make it the largest predator ancient humans in the region could ever have encountered.

Dr Fidelis Masao, a researcher in the Gorge, said that the remains would be returned to Tanzania some three years from now after they have been analysed in America, “unlike our dinosaur skeletons that were taken to Germany but have not been returned. The dinosaurs were not brought back mainly following legal complications because Tanzania was under German colonial rule when they were discovered. The researcher explained that the discovery was proof that in the environment of those ancient times such creatures could survive, although that might be very difficult now.

Chris Brochu, a vertebrate palaeontologist at the University of Iowa was quoted as saying that he would not guarantee that the crocodiles in question killed ancient humans “only that they were certainly biting them”. Ancient hominid bones discovered by Mary and Louis Leakey in the same sediments bear distinct bite marks likely to have been inflicted by large crocodiles. Yet, most researchers have assumed that the gashes were delivered by the same species of crocodiles that prowls the banks of the Nile today.

This is not so claims Brochu, who re-analysed numerous incomplete fossils, the most recent of which was unearthed in 2007 by among others Jackson Njau of the Natural History Museum in Arusha. Though roughly the same size as the reptilian denizens of the Nile, the Olduvai crocodiles had thinner, more flared snouts and large horns more characteristic of Madagascan crocodiles that went extinct in the past few thousand years. “The discovery of C. anthropophagus points to far more diversity in African crocodiles in the past 2.5 million years than was thought,” argues Brochu. He says his team has not found many fossils belonging to C. anthropophagus, but none is complete, “so it’s impossible to determine its precise relationship to the modern Nile crocodiles. But, Brochu has little doubt that C. anthropophagus threatened the ancient hominids who called Olduvai Gorge home. According to the palaeontologists, larger crocodiles would have been capable of consuming hominids completely, leaving no trace.

In January the Guardian reported that serious discussions were still underway between the government and the Indian investor-RITES – on the possibilities of amending some sections of the contract governing the operations of Tanzania Railways Limited (TRL). The government was also considering whether the contract between the two shareholders should continue or not. The government was still topping up workers’ salaries at a cost of about Shs 522 million monthly, these sums being loans to the company. The government expected that they would be repaid when the firm started operating efficiently.

TRL has been experiencing differences on policy with the Indian company and the workers have been on a number of strikes since the new management took over operations of the central railway line three years ago.

Also in January the Guardian published a strange story about the other main railway – the Tanzania Zambia Railways (TAZARA).
Extracts: ‘The Managing Director of TAZARA, who went missing since last November, has spoken from his hideout, saying that the tense situation in the company had left him with only one option – to leave the country. He said that his hasty departure was prompted by leaked information that the police were pursuing him to face some charges in court. He said he could not withstand ‘the heat’ bearing in mind that he had never been in court before, even to bail out someone. The charges he was facing included contempt of court. He feared the charges were economically motivated following stringent measures he had imposed after assuming office. He accused “some people” of ….cheating on the volume of cargo ferried; others siphoned diesel and lubricant from locomotives while others worked day and night to deny haulage to the firm, making connections with private lorry owners instead. He was also quoted as saying that the one year he had been in office was the time of rebuilding, including repairing locomotive engines and wagons and the infrastructure to reduce accidents that occurred frequently. “Unfortunately, after June 2009 the world economic meltdown hit TAZARA…There was very little traffic as copper from Zambia dropped from 15,000 tonnes to just 5,000 tonnes.’

The Guardian also reported that Infrastructure Development Minister Dr Shukuru Kawambwa had said that his office was aware of the disappearance of the MD, and that deliberations on the matter would be held at a joint meeting involving concerned ministers from Tanzania and Zambia. Kawambwa also said that the Chinese government was set to lend Tanzania and Zambia $ 39 million as part of new a strategy to bailout the jointly-owned railway line. The Chinese government was also going to send management and technical staff to support the existing management. In an editorial, the Guardian proposed that a major management, manpower and financial audit be conducted so as to bring to the fore all underlying issues and durable solutions recommended. Furthermore, the system of appointment of the Chief Executive should be reviewed.

A new report exposed continued large-scale illegal ivory trading in Tanzania and Zambia on the eve of the opening of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) meeting in Qatar in late March. However, the governments of the two countries proposed to CITES that they should be allowed to sell $15 million worth of tusks.

The report, ‘The Burgeoning Illegal Ivory Trade in Tanzania and Zambia’, by the ‘Environmental Investigation Agency’ (EIA), a non-profit group based in Washington, DC and London, quoted in This Day, said that undercover investigators had found evidence of a flourishing trade in illegal ivory in both countries. It said that Tanzania’s elephant population had declined by more than 30,000 elephants between 2006 and 2009, primarily from poaching to supply black-market ivory to Asia. This was said to be concentrated around the Selous Game Reserve, where 40% of the country’s elephants are found.

A seemingly innocent proposal by the government to sell 90 tonnes of its ivory stockpiles worth $15 million to provide much needed revenue came under severe criticism. There was strong opposition from the tourist business in Tanzania. Chairman of the Zanzibar Association of Tourism Investors (ZATI) Mohammed Simai said that the campaign would impede Tanzania’s efforts to promote tourism, including game viewing in prominent national reserves like Selous, Serengeti and Ngorongoro. He urged President Kikwete to intervene and stop the proposed sale and added that the $15 million was a drop in the sea compared to potential losses from tourism. Tanzania earned Shs 1.6 trillion in 2008 from 640,000 tourists accounting for some 17% of GDP. Zanzibar would lose heavily because 30% of foreigners who came to Zanzibar had been game viewing tourists on the mainland.

Next, there was a visit to Tanzania by a delegation from CITES to assess if the country deserved a stockpile trade window. The government argued that its elephant population was safe and on the rise.

However, at the CITES conference in Qatar, issues of poaching were high on the agenda and Tanzania’s proposal attracted opposition from East Africa Community partners Kenya and Rwanda, and angered several other western countries and conservation groups. Britain’s Environmental Secretary Hilary Benn declared that the UK would vote no. The London Times had declared that Tanzania had established itself as the leading country for the illegal slaughter and export of ivory. Up to 50 elephants were killed every month at Selous it wrote and the authorities were torching the carcasses as a cover up. Other countries that called for a 20-year included Mali, Benin, Chad, Ethiopia, Ghana, Guinea, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Togo, Liberia, Sierra Leone and the Government of Southern Sudan. Zambia was the only African country to support Tanzania.

Tanzania’s proposal was eventually rejected by CITES.

And in the Philippines
In the Philippines, a wildlife officer has been suspected of stealing at least part of 700 kilos of elephant tusks worth $2 million which had been smuggled into the country from Tanzania. According to the Director the country’s Protected Areas and Wildlife Bureau, the ivory – valued at $65,000 – had been part of a 4,000-kilo shipment of tusks impounded at Manila airport in July 2009. The seals on some of the boxes had been broken and some of the original tusks had been replaced by replicas made of PVC pipes covered with plaster. She went on: “This is really embarrassing because we should be among the proactive countries protecting such internationally-important species.

In a related development, 23 African countries told the European Union to support protection of the continent’s elephants and that, in return, they would help the EU to protect bluefin tuna. However, if the EU did not back their case, they threatened to oppose Europe’s proposal to ban trade in the giant fish. At the CITES meeting in March the proposed ban on fishing for blue tuna was overwhelmingly defeated after considerable lobbying by Japan which consumes large quantities.

Dr Anna Tibaijuka, Under Secretary General of the UN and Executive Director of UN Habitat, has been given the ‘Goteborg Award for Sustainable Development’ which is widely considered equivalent to the Nobel Prize for the environment. It is awarded by the City of Goteborg in Sweden. In accepting the award, which comes with a cash prize of $147,000, she spoke in Swedish and said that the money would be channnelled to the UN Habitat’s support for young people living in slums. This provoked mirth among the Tanzanian government delegation, who vehemently shook their heads in mock disappointment. “How dare she? We cannot come all the way to this cold country and not be rewarded even with a cup of tea” one of them joked loudly.

In Stockholm she launched her book ‘Building Prosperity: and Economic Development’.

And, in Tanzania, US Ambassador Alfonso Lenhardt has presented the 2010 ‘Tanzanian Woman of Courage Award’ to Ananilea Nkya, Executive Director of the Tanzania Media Women’s Association (TAMWA) for her efforts to promote equality, opportunity and justice for Tanzanian women and girls. The Ambassador stressed that education will enhance women’s participation in the country’s economic activities and free them from early marriages, pregnancy and HIV/Aids. “For a bird to fly straight and high, both wings must be equally strong and developed. Both men and women must fully possess social and political rights and have equal opportunity to go for higher education”, he said. He said Nkya was given the award due to her efforts in using the mass media to raise awareness, speak out on gender-based violence, train women journalists and help repeal laws that limit women’s rights. He said that Nkya had designed a media campaign against a Zanzibar law which made pregnancy out of wedlock a crime and managed to spearhead amendments to the Marriage Act which currently allows girls younger than 18 to be married. He said that Nkya trained women politicians in 2005 aiming to increase their numbers in politics. As a result there were 1, 500 women candidates compared to 200 in previous elections. He said that through TAMWA, the government passed the ‘Sexual Offences Special Provision Act of 1998’ which criminalized FGM and increased the punishment of rapists to 30 years in jail.

Nkya is the third recipient of the Tanzania Woman of Courage Award since the US Embassy initiated it. The other recipients are Helen Kijo-Bisimba, Executive Director of the ‘Legal and Human Rights Centre’ in 2008 and Anne Malecela, MP for Same East in 2009 – Guardian.