Kigoma: Fresh hope as a sleeping giant awakens
What you need to know:
- The region was to all intents and purposes cut of from the rest of the rest of the country. It was forgotten, for lack of a better word, and could well have been a region in a neighbouring country.
Kigoma Region is finally opening up. It will be recalled that Kigoma was for many decades a little more than a sleepy outpost on Tanzania’s western fringes.
The region was to all intents and purposes cut of from the rest of the rest of the country. It was forgotten, for lack of a better word, and could well have been a region in a neighbouring country.
However, that is no longer the case, thanks to swift infrastructural development that has been taking place all over the country in the last two decades or so.
It is now possible, for instance, to travel by road between Kigoma and Tanzania’s commercial capital and largest city Dar es Salaam in the east of the country – a distance of about 1,200 kilometres – in less than 24 hours, something that was unthinkable as recently as ten years ago.
Previously, the fastest way to travel between the two destinations was to endure a bone-jarring three-day train ride on the ageing Central Line, which dates back to the German colonial era.
Kigoma’s steady rise received another huge boost earlier in the week when the region was finally connected to the national electricity grid.
Unreliable electricity from diesel-fired generators and Kigoma’s perceived remoteness were for many years among reasons that made the region a hard sell as an investment destination.
President Samia Suluhu Hassan said when switching off the generators on Monday that the government’s aim is to turn Kigoma into a strategic region, given its proximity to neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Rwanda and Burundi.
It should be remembered that the DRC is widely considered Africa’s richest nation in terms of natural resources, and Kigoma can be an important regional gateway to Tanzania’s vast neighbour to the west.
It has taken Tanzania way too long to realise Kigoma’s potential to contribute more to economic growth, but, as they say, better late than never.
In essence, Tanzania is awakening a sleeping giant, which can only be good for the country and the region at large.
Let's save nation's future
Reports that four out 10 children are stunted, with an acceptably high number succumbing to malnutrition do not augur well for the prosperity of this nation. They are incomprehensible.
Much of this country is abundantly endowed with fruits and vegetables, but the crop often ends up decaying in areas with surplus production.
Malnutrition occurs when people do not eat a balanced diet, but pawpaw, oranges, bananas and pineapples, for instance, are rarely to be found on the tables of residents of rice growing communities whose households have access to plenty of the fruits.
Fortifying flour and cooking oil saves children from early death, but only salt is iodised in Tanzania.
It is time the authorities exercised leadership by introducing and enforcing nutritional interventions for the sake of the nation’s future.
