PM courts diaspora to woo more foreign investment

Dar es Salaam. Prime Minister Kassim Majaliwa yesterday engaged Tanzanian diaspora in Japan to be agents of wooing investors into Tanzania.

The PM was speaking yesterday during a meeting with a group of Tanzanian diaspora in Japan, where he was on an official visit representing President Samia Suluhu Hassan in the burial of Japan’s ex-Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

“I urge you to connect with your friends here and encourage them to invest at home in various sectors such as tourism, mining, and industry. We rely on you to find these proper investors because we believe you live with them and know them better,” he said.

In a statement issued by the PM’s Office yesterday, Mr Majaliwa also encouraged Tanzanians in foreign countries to use Kiswahili language as a way to secure employment as other countries have seen the opportunity and have decided to include it in their curricula (syllabus).

The Prime Minister used the opportunity to also reveal some of the achievements by the current administration, including the improvement in the sectors of education, health, water, energy and transportation and road and railway infrastructure.

The chairman of the Association of Tanzanians living in Japan, which they have named Tanzanite, Mr Frank Semaganga, said that the community with 400 members was established so that they could help each other, bring unity and promote Tanzania.

He said one of their requests include improvements of the operating systems on the Stock Exchange (DSE) so that it would allow diaspora members to directly invest through the financial markets in bonds.

For her part, the chairperson of the Society of Students Studying Japan (TSJ), Ms Eunice Likotiko, asked the government to look into how to make good use of the knowledge of Tanzanians studying abroad.

She said: “The ministry should create a database of students who have studied abroad and classify the skills they have acquired so that they can be given an opportunity to show their creativity and determine how it can be used to help the country.”