The Tanzania that Tanzanians want

Dar es Salaam. At least six specific issues will have to be undertaken in the coming two decades to enable the creation of a Tanzania that Tanzanians aspire for as the work towards the National Development Vision 2050 gets underway.

The issues – highlighted by Vice President Philip Mpango in Dodoma yesterday – come at a time when the National Development Vision 2025, which was launched in 1999 to cater for Tanzania’s development needs from 2000 to 2025, remains with only two years to go.

A number of achievements

The Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Finance and Planning, Dr Natu El-Maamry Mwamba, said during the past 23 years of implementing Vision 2025, Tanzania has registered a number of achievements.

Gracing the event, Dr Mpango, who previously worked as the head of the Planning Commission, said the first thing that the team – formed to kick-start the Vision 2050 preparation process will need to do – was to look at ways of consolidating gains attained during the implementation of Vision 2025.

He said the team will also have to come up with ways by which Tanzania can make effective use of the available opportunities while also grabbing new ones.

On the existing opportunities, said Dr Mpango, special importance must be put on agriculture which, he said, has the potential to turn Tanzania into a food basket for Africa and beyond.

“This will be possible if we decide to boost our production of maize, wheat, barley, soybeans, sugar, cooking oil, cashew nuts, fruits and vegetables among others,” said Dr Mpango, who was the Minister for Finance and Planning before rising to become Vice President in March 2021.

Existing opportunities

The existing opportunities also entail raising Tanzania’s earnings from the livestock sub sector by upping investments in processing factories for meat, skins and hides, milk and fodder production.

A particular importance will also have to be directed towards the fisheries sub-sector, including fish farming and processing. The country, said Dr Mpango, could also earn handsomely by making a good use of its forestry products. “This will need us to look at timber, bee products and medicine processing factories,” he said.

In making proper use of the existing opportunities, Dr Mpango also said the team will have to come up with ways to up the addition of Tanzania’s products and minerals that were currently being exported in raw form. The country will also have to come with a concrete plan on how to harvest Tanzania’s strategic resources that would hasten the industrialisation process, including natural gas deposits. “We have natural gas and therefore, we need to build a Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) plant; petrochemical processing factories including fertiliser and coal and iron ore [including Mchuchuma and Liganga],” he said.

Tanzania also has nickel deposits which could be used in setting up a battery factory.

“We have soda ash for the glass industry. We also have helium gas in Lake Rukwa for the processing of hospital equipment like MRI [Magnetic Resonance Imaging]. We have rare earth elements for high tech industries like production of smartphones, digital cameras, computers and television sets among others,” he said.

Apart from a youthful population that gives Tanzania enough human resource to boost economic growth going forward, the country is also strategically located so much so that it is well positioned to become the hub of transport and logistics in the great lake region. Tourism, commercialisation of Kiswahili and the creative industry are also the issues that will have to be put to proper use as planners plan Vision 2050.

The third aspect that planners will have to seriously consider as they plan Tanzania’s development path to 2050, according to Dr Mpango, is giving priority to education. “On this, special emphasis must be put on science, technical and vocational training, research and development as well as innovation to boost the productivity of the country’s manpower,” said Dr Mpango.

Domesticating technology that would boost productivity in all sectors of economic production must also be seriously considered. This, he said, was important if Tanzania was to effectively cushion the impact of climate change. Getting into partnerships would also help Tanzania to leapfrog its competitors with much ease.

The development planners will also have to precisely outline the resources that will be required to effectively implement Vision 2050 along with coming up with a concrete follow up mechanism in line with the laid down Key Performance Indicators.

Asian countries

It is Dr Mpango’s view that the team currently working on the preparations of Vision 2050 will find time to go and learn from countries that have managed to boost their economic growth rates since 1960s, including from Asian countries. “They should learn how the countries managed to defeat the middle income trap and moved forward,” he said. The middle income trap is largely the result of a country’s inability to continue the process of moving from low value-added to high value-added industries.

“Key to this must be on how this plan can move us from our current development stage to the next one,” he said.

He told the members appointed to conduct the exercise to ensure that they talk to all relevant people across the economic divide and come up with a vision that will carry the aspirations of a Tanzania that people need.

The six issues, said Dr Mpango will ensure that Tanzania builds its economy further on the foundation of its lower middle income status which it attained in 2020.

They will also help the country to defeat some of the challenges it encountered during the implementation of Vision 2025.

The challenges include the presence of reasonable population of Tanzanians that still lives below the income poverty level and the growing income gap among Tanzanians despite doing well in the GDP growth rate. Tanzania’s income inequality – as measured by the Gini coefficient – rose from 0.34 percent in 2011/12 to 0.38 percent in 2017/18.

Besides, according to the 2022 demographic and health survey, 30 percent of under five children in Tanzania face retardation and that nine percent of them have severe retardation.

Vision 2025 focused on five key areas of building high quality livelihood, maintaining peace, stability and unity, building good governance, creating a well-educated and learning society as well as building a competitive economy that is capable of producing sustainable growth and shared benefits.

But while the country has registered several achievements in almost all parameters, there were still several issues that the country needed to do to realise the dream of a prosperous Tanzania.

“While we have managed to raise enrolment rates at different education levels and raised the literacy rate to about 92 percent of the population, the new challenge is that not all students who complete their education in various levels get the chance to be absorbed into the job opportunities that the economy offers,” said Dr Mpango

Competitive economy

On the building of a competitive economy, Dr Mpango said Tanzania’s economy was not very competitive and that the country still needed to build the trust and confidence of investors. This, he said, was being done through improving the investment and business climate.

Besides, the government’s budget is dependent on development partners’ support by 13 percent. In the same vein, he said, Tanzania’s capacity to mitigate the impacts of climate change was also low.

“This has to a great extent affected the productivity in the farming and livestock keeping sub-sectors and the delivery of social services such as water and electricity….,” he said.

Detailing some of the achievements during the implementation of Vision 2025, Dr Mwamba said apart from graduating to the lower middle income status in 2020, poverty levels in Tanzania have also declined by over nine percent from 35.7 percent in 2000/21 fiscal year to 24.6 percent in 2017/18.

She also detailed some achievements in the health sector, including a drop in maternal and children mortality rates as well as a rise in access to water, education and electricity services among others.

She, however, noted that Tanzania, just like all other countries in the world, has gone through some challenging times during the past two decades. The key challenges include the 2008 global economic crisis, the 2019 global Covid-19 pandemic, climate change and the ongoing war in Ukraine.

Tarmac roads

Finance and Planning minister, Dr Mwigulu Nchemba said prior to Vision 2025, very few regions were connected by a tar-marc road.

“You can now move from Dodoma to all corners of the country on a tar-mark road which is contrary to where we were almost 25 years ago….,” he said.

About 25 years ago, said Dr Nchemba, Tanzania’s monthly revenue collections stood at an average of Sh30 billion. The amount has since risen to over Sh2 trillion.