Morogoro bizz decline: What does the story tell us?

It is early February, 2021 and Tanzania is done and dusted with matters elections, or so one would have thought.

Watching one of the large TV stations though, you would not know so, they are still, foot on the pedal, feeding their viewers with what can only be political communication also known as propaganda .

Those of you familiar with Morogoro will know that for the longest time the tobacco industry was a major employer through Tanzania Tobacco Packaging Limited and Tanzania Leaf Tobacco Ltd.

As they say, time waits for no man and in this case, and for reasons that are yet to be clear, both of those companies are no more and with them, jobs have been lost.

A few days ago, one of the not so large banks in Morogoro town had an unusual “run on the bank”, not your usual run on the bank but yes, the footfall for that week was larger than usual.

The reason-staff of the garment firm Mazava, were being paid their final dues after the Filipino–run firm folded. Over 3,000 Tanzanian women who had for the last so many years earned their daily bread at the Msamvu based factory are back to the streets looking for alternative means of running their lives.

What went wrong? We will never know, shall we? We won’t because the programs run on the aforesaid Television are very busy feeding viewers with success stories.

In a recent conversation with a lady who used to rent her residential houses in the leafy forest area to staff of the tobacco companies leaves one wondering why the truth is being revised.

A property for which she used to collect $2,000 a month has been without a tenant despite her reducing the rent to $750 per month to try collect something as the house demands to be maintained even if it remains unoccupied.

There is this property in Kireka Hill which was home and a sanctuary to visiting doctors from the United States over many years. The doctors who served as volunteers in our regional hospital have not been around for a while now.

Once again, it’s unclear as to how a mission that used to offer much needed health services has come to an end. Unfortunately, it is the housing that tells the story of this gap in absence.

Lots of properties in Forest Hill were really put up with expert occupancy in mind and not for local rental. They are expensive and well-furnished and ensconced in the only up market area of Morogoro. A little further into the town centre now home to a well-done modern municipal market, the only businesses one can say are thriving are bars. Is this a justification that business is doing well or that residents, have been left to drown their sorrows in the bottle?

Moreover, the Morogoro municipality refuses to grow beyond its one street town Centre which starts from Msamvu to Boma Road where NHIF occupy a storied building among others with a bank that for years have had between 40-60 per cent occupancy. Even more evidence, that business is on the decline.

Further up the road at Masika round about, yet another bank has occupancy in an iconic building but whose occupancy is dominated by the bank and a few other agencies only to the 50 per cent capacity occupancy.

Somehow, the-know-it-all on these TV talk shows are the only ones who think things are so good. But the reality on the ground is a little different. Morogoro town is reeling from unemployment following the death of the aforementioned companies.

If the companies were vibrant and working, things would be different, just as the well-meant but very tough measures have made the room for operating an NGO result in many closing down, unable to tick all the right boxes.

Is the decline we seen in ‘Mji Kasoro Bahari’ (Morogoro) a harbinger of the way things are nationally? Is business thriving as we are meant to understand or tottering on the brink? Your guess is as good as mine.

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The columnist is a researcher & Communications specialist with the firm Midas Touché East Africa