Ami Mpungwe: Why I retired at 48

Dar es Salaam. In October 1999, Ambassador Ami Mpungwe took a bold decision to retire from Foreign Service at the age of 48, a time when many of his peers considered him ripe and ready for better things to come as Tanzania’s envoy to South Africa and other opportunities in the public service.

Several issues had informed his decision to take up early retirement including the fact that he had reached the pinnacle of his diplomatic career at that age.

In his own assessment, the events that had transpired in Tanzania on the economic sphere in the four years after President Benjamin William Mkapa assumed office in 1995 were part of the impetus.

He says that three factors basically gave him the confidence that time was ripe to throw in the towel and start something new at that time.

“I was fortunate to have been given very big responsibilities at a very young age, for instance in 1985 at the age of 34, I was personal assistant to President Mwinyi and I always teased President Mwinyi that this was when my youth was stolen,” he says. He adds: “I grew older almost immediately because it was one heavy responsibility after another, President Mwinyi, I went to work for Chief Secretary Paul Rupia at the State House.”

This was followed by another appointment in 1989 when he was assigned for one year to participate in the transition process of Namibia’s Independence.

“The frontline states had a team there and we worked very hard to get Swapo (South West Africa People’s Organisation) win the elections and get that transition process smooth in accordance with the requirements of the UN Security Council resolutions 435,” he says.

Upon his return to Tanzania, he was then appointed the director of Africa and the Middle East at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, a docket that was handling all the liberation movements.

“Immediately, the Rwandan issue fell on my lap as a result I spent 13 months in Arusha from June 1992 to August 1993 when we negotiated the Arusha Peace Agreement for Rwanda.”

And as they say, you are sometimes a victim of your own success, with South Africa on the brink of trashing the inhumane Apartheid system, Ambassador Mpungwe was posted to South Africa.

“After helping in that transition process as well, I was immediately appointed Tanzania’s first High Commissioner to South Africa in 1994.”

It was a role that required that he starts from scratch with early operations being carried out from hotel rooms as they sought to set up proper operations of the High Commission. “By 1998, I was completely burnt out, that was when I approached the President but he asked me to stay on for one year,” he says.

Having spent his entire diplomatic career in Southern Africa, to see Nelson Mandela out of jail and to see apartheid being eradicated was probably a defining moment in his career.

“There was nothing more I could achieve that was more exciting than that, even if they had sent me to New York, Tokyo or London it wouldn’t have been as exciting as that role in South Africa,” he says.

He adds: “But thirdly, having been at the forefront in mobilising investments to Tanzania, interacting quite heavily with investors, CEOs, and some of them coming to Tanzania and back in speaking in awe of the potentials that the country had, I saw a lot of opportunities”.

As a diplomat in South Africa, he says, President Mkapa had made light of his work because macro and micro fundamentals had been established and being deepened at home so it was easy to mobilise FDI inflow into Tanzania because the statistics were there to back it up.

“During my time I managed to convince SABMiller to invest in Tanzania Breweries, in the banking sector we managed to get both Stanbic and Absa; in agriculture, Illovo came to Kilombero, whereas in the tourism sector we had Holiday Inn, Royal Palm and other high end entities such as the Conservation Corporation Africa (CCA) which had invested in Serengeti, Manyara, Ngorongoro and Zanzibar and several mining entities.”

However, even when he was convinced that he was making the right choice there was one hurdle that he had to overcome, and that was how to face President Mkapa.

“It was perhaps the most difficult part of the whole decision. I thought about writing a letter but then that would have been very impolite. So I arranged for an appointment,” he says.

“President Mkapa was unique in many ways, first of all he had been my foreign minister twice so he had known me since my younger days at the ministry and he saw me growing up, so he believed in me,” he says.

The meeting was not easy and he admits that he almost gave up the idea because the Head of State just like others did not see why he was leaving at a time he was probably at his prime in diplomatic circles.

“I had a strong case, I was a believer of the Mkapa economic revolution and I sincerely believed that the success and the sustainability of this revolution depended on the existence of a very strong private sector that is sufficiently indigenous,” he says.

He says that even with all the good policies, and the conducive environment that Mr Mkapa had created it could not be sustained if there were no local players.

“You cannot reduce Tanzanians into passive spectators in this economic game being played by foreigners, so I believed that some of us should go into the private sector, because we were fortunate that the nation had afforded us education, opportunity to get exposure and to understand the dynamics of doing business.”

This, he says, is still his guiding principle and belief to date.