feed is available 
Tanzania: An African country that deserves the money it gets (The Economist)
September 29, 2006 5:59 PM
Sep 28th 2006 | DAR ES SALAAM
DEVELOPMENT economists use it as a measure. If Tanzania can haul itself
out of poverty, others can too. But if it cannot, there will have to be
another rethink about the way that aid money is spent.
For the moment, Tanzania is one of east Africa’s few good-news stories.
That isn’t saying much. The country remains wretchedly poor,
inefficient, with little medical care in its remote areas, few roads and with
frequent power cuts, even in Dar es Salaam, the largest city. But donors,
disillusioned by the corruption and/or brutality that goes on
elsewhere, are happy to pour money into somewhere that is, at least, both
peaceful and stable.
And in Jakaya Kikwete, Tanzania has found a president committed to
doing his best to cut poverty. A long-serving former foreign minister, Mr
Kikwete was elected in December with 80% of the vote. He remains hugely
popular.
He is helped by the efforts of his predecessors, particularly the
sturdy Benjamin Mkapa. The country’s GDP growth is expected to be 5.8% this
year, rising to 6.7% next year, and inflation has been low for years.
Tanzania’s relative lack of graft means that some donors now put their
money directly into the national budget with few strings attached.
Britain hopes to deposit $170m a year into Tanzania’s coffers in this way
for the next few years?ust the kind of predictability of giving that the
aid community has called for.
The question is whether the Tanzanian government will be able to spend
the money wisely. Prioritising is difficult. For instance, it takes Mr
Kikwete over an hour, in an interview, just to outline the basic needs:
more schools, universities and hospitals; more roads. Mr Kikwete’s
party, Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM), has set ambitious targets for all these
shortages. Lack of clean water is a particular worry. “It tortures our
women,” says Mr Kikwete, with feeling. CCM’s manifesto calls for
doubling the access to drinking water by 2010.
Overhauling the largely subsistence agricultural sector could be even
more important. If yields can be increased through subsidised irrigation
and fertilisers, and if peasants can diversify their production from
maize, “we can say bye-bye to poverty,” promises Mr Kikwete. That is an
old tune?gronomists have been humming it since the 1960s. But this time
the plans are backed by road-building schemes, new technologies, market
mechanisms and, just possibly, enough donor money to underwrite the
subsidies.
Much also rests on how CCM performs. The party has dominated national
politics since independence, with disastrous economic results in the old
days. It is no longer socialist?he old mantra of self-reliance is more
of a sentiment than an ideology now?ut nor is it yet a businessman’s
party. Though the past few years have brought in some foreign investors,
especially in gold mining, there are few signs of the kind of
innovative policies that might attract significant investment or lure back
educated Tanzanians from abroad.
Still, CCM can take credit for Tanzania’s strong sense of
“togetherness”: it is a place where loyalty to the country often counts for more
than tribal or religious identity. Mr Kikwete is an observant Muslim. The
first president, Julius Nyerere, was a pious Roman Catholic; the church
is considering him for sainthood. Togetherness may also explain why CCM
remains as dominant as it still is: at last year’s election, it won 202
of the 232 parliamentary seats.
Mr Kikwete travels with minimal security. He scrolls through several
hundred text messages on his mobile phone each day, most of them from
ordinary citizens who have somehow obtained his number. Sometimes he texts
back. He is clearheaded on international issues. He is happy to
contribute three battalions to a prospective UN peacekeeping force in the
Darfur region of Sudan, he says, so long as someone else foots the bill.
Perhaps the biggest reason for hope lies glittering below the ground.
The government’s demand for a bigger cut in revenues means that its
relations with foreign gold-mining concerns are strained. But the country
remains rich in deposits of gold and other minerals. Some reckon that
there is $20 billion in nickel deposits alone, somewhere down there in
the earth.
Copyright ?2006 The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group. All
rights reserved.
Read "Tanzania: An African country that deserves the money it gets"
Posted at 5:59 PM
