YES, INVEST IN RURAL AREAS
A recent Afrobarometer study found that “income poverty remains a chronic economic problem in Tanzania”.
Based on the Afrobarometer findings and other analyses, well-wishers of Tanzania’s welfare boldly call upon the government to redress the situation.
For starters, it should earnestly do this by revisiting its lopsided and sometimes hackneyed development policies. These have tended to favour urban settlements, providing them at public expense with exotic projects like flyovers and urban farming, while rural Tanzanians continue to suffer from poor utilities like electricity, gas, water, sewerage and health/medical services, over and above other equally-poor social and economic infrastructure such as education, transport, produce markets and irrigation systems.
According to the World Bank and the UN Population Division’s World Urbanisation Prospects, some 37.61 million (67.68 per cent) of the country’s total population in 2016 lived in rural Tanzania, mostly living in chronic abject poverty.
If and when this majority population is developed socially and economically, then it can earnestly be said that the country is making progress. And, to do that, we need to heed and act on what the likes of the Kigoma Urban MP Zitto Kabwe counsels: invest heavily in basic social services in rural Tanzania for multiplier effect in terms of investment returns and all-inclusive development.
