Tanzania is Opening Itself to the World

  By Henry Srebrnik, [Moncton, NB] Times & Transcript

The east African country now called Tanzania, a nation of 60 million people that borders eight other countries, became independent as Tanganyika in 1961, under the leadership of Julius Nyerere. The challenges besetting the state were complex. Except for a few coastal areas, the country was poor, illiterate and underdeveloped.

In response, President Nyerere, who ruled it as a one-party state, in his Arusha Declaration of 1967 announced an economic plan, declaring the establishment of “African Socialism,” in order to promote self-reliance based on African values of egalitarianism and welfare.

He set up “villagization” programmes, encouraging people to move to new settlements to engage in collectivized small-scale agricultural production.

The policies of socialism and self-reliance were presented under the umbrella
of Ujamaa, meaning family in KiSwahili. This, according to Nyerere, was the
most basic and representative expression of African socialism.

Nyerere saw ujamaa’s mission as the neutralisation of the vestiges of capitalism that colonialism had introduced to the continent.

By 1977, over 13 million Tanzanians lived in ujamaa villages. This represented almost all the country’s rural population. Yet, despite this massive undertaking of social engineering, the ujamaa experiment failed to produce the levels of rural development required to keep Tanzania’s economic expansion ahead of its population growth.

This was because, even in their traditional societies, the rural farmers were never collectivists. They would certainly co-operate as a community to clear land and offer mutual assistance at times of harvest or need, but that was all.

Tanzania’s economy ended up suffering two decades of decline, requiring foreign aid to feed its population. Ujamaa was eventually abandoned after Nyerere’s retirement in 1985.

Today’s Tanzania isn’t all that different from its African neighbours. Beginning in the mid-1980s, under the administration of Nyerere’s successor, President Ali Hassan Mwinyi, Tanzania undertook several political and economic reforms. In 1992 the government decided to adopt multiparty democracy. Legal and constitutional changes led to the registration of 11 political parties.

Nevertheless, power has been held by the party built by Nyerere, the Party of the Revolution, or Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM), through every presidential election since, and opposition leaders have found themselves harassed, detained, and otherwise prevented from mounting effective challenges to its rule.

The election of President John Magufuli in 2015 witnessed a marked decline in respect for free expression, association, and assembly. He was a vocal COVID-19 sceptic who urged Tanzanians to shun mask-wearing and denounced vaccines as a Western conspiracy. Under his rule Tanzania isolated itself from its neighbours and the world. Yet he won re-election in 2020 in a disputed vote marked by irregularities.

His sudden death March 19 of last year elevated his running mate, Samia Suluhu Hassan, to the top job. She is the first female president of Tanzania. Her leadership style is seen as a potential contrast from Magufuli, a brash populist who earned the nickname “Bulldozer” for muscling through policies and who drew criticism for his intolerance of dissent.

Hassan, a devout Muslim born in Zanzibar, has visited several African and European countries and the United Arab Emirates in the past year. Tanzania is rapidly opening up to its neighbors. The country ratified the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) last year, giving Tanzania access to a market of 1.2 billion potential customers.

Her administration agreed to join the rest of the East African Community in signing a trade deal with the European Union, which Magufuli had previously blocked. Tanzania also recently removed dozens of trade barriers with Kenya.

Exports of manufactured goods from Tanzania to its neighbours have already shot up by a third, and Tanzania’s national poverty rate fell in 2021, despite the effects of the pandemic. But tourism, which made up 10 per cent of Tanzania’s GDP, has yet to recover.

Her main priority has been to revive the economy, build thousands of schools and health clinics, extend clean water and electricity to rural areas and complete key infrastructure projects, including a railway line and a major hydropower plant.

She is also committed to reviewing the constitution, which grants vast powers to the executive and was adopted in 1977, when the country was still a one-party state. Her government has already lifted bans on four newspapers.