Tanzania wins another big prize

The Africa-America Institute (AAI) held its 23rd Annual Awards Gala on 19th September in New York. Under the theme Tanzania: Educating for a Sustainable Future, the Gala paid tribute to the People of Tanzania for the East African nation’s significant progress in education, environmental conservation, and in creating a business-friendly environment for entrepreneurs and investment. H.E. Jakaya Mrisho Kikwete, President of the United Republic of Tanzania, accepted the AAI African National Achievement Award on behalf of the People of Tanzania.

Mora McLean, President & CEO of AAI, said,

We commend Tanzania for its extraordinary commitment to build human capacity, particularly by strengthening its educational system at all levels. We celebrate their achievements and progress.

The sold-out black-tie Gala was chaired by American financier and conservationist Paul Tudor Jones II and Reginald Mengi, CEO of Tanzania’s media conglomerate IPP Limited. The AAI Gala raised nearly $900,000, the highest amount raised in the organization’s history, to support AAI’s efforts to help build human capacity in Africa through education and training programs, and to develop programming and forums aimed at educating Americans about Africa. Nearly 500 distinguished U.S. and African leaders and top diplomats attended the Annual Awards Gala to celebrate African achievement, including Dr. Asha-Rose Migiro, Deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations.

The Gala also honoured a number of other people, including the AAI Distinguished Alumnus Award presented to Gidion Kaino Mandesi, Executive Director of the Disabled Organization for Legal Affairs and Social Economic Development (DOLASED) in Tanzania.

During his remarks Mr. Tudor Jones, who is also founder of The Grumeti Community and Wildlife Conservation Fund in Tanzania, announced the creation of The Kikwete Scholarships, a ten-year commitment by the Grumeti Fund to support tertiary level training for Tanzanian students to pursue studies in the field of environmental conservation at U.S. universities. The scholarships, which recognize President Kikwete’s leadership and commitment to conservation and environmental causes, will support the studies of 20 students over the next ten years.

In his remarks, President Kikwete personally thanked Mr. Tudor Jones for the scholarships, saying it would help further study on environmental conservation in Tanzania.

Tanzania has achieved nearly universal primary education, setting it on target to meeting one of the UN Millennium Development Goals. The country’s education system has grown from just one university in 1961 to some 200 tertiary training institutions at the end of 2006. A new four-year institution, Dodoma University, will soon open, enrolling 1000 students.

Since independence in 1961, the country’s has maintained its pledge to safeguard its abundant wildlife and natural environment. Today, more than 25 percent of Tanzania’s total land area is under conservation, higher than the world average and exceeding United Nations goals.

In the area of business and investment, Tanzania was recently cited by The World Bank as one of Africa’s top two reformers. During the Gala Reginald Mengi, Tanzanian businessman and media mogul, recognized Tanzania’s recent business success and challenged the Western media to show the thriving side of Africa to encourage business and foreign investment.

Pew Survey in NYT Interactive Graph

Tanzanians are more likely to think that their children will be worse off in the future than think they will be better off. They are twice as likely to hold this view compared with people in West African countries like Ghana, Nigeria and Ivory Coast.

This is one of the sobering findings from a large scale survey carried out in ten sub-Saharan countries earlier this year by the New York Times and Pew Global Attitudes Project.
There’s a fantastic interactive graph on the New York Times website. To access it, you may need to register on the NYT site, but its worth it. The NYT also has an article about the poll.

Click the questions and watch the graphs on each country change. It’s worth spending some time looking and comparing the views of the different countries. This is one of the ways that we can step out of our familiar world and try to see the world through the eyes of others.

Through Tanzanian eyes, the world looks corrupt (two-thirds say corrupt political leaders are a big problem), hungry (half had times in the past year when they didn’t have money to buy necessary food) and uneducated (three-quarters say poor schools are a problem).

On the other hand, more than 90% say that President Kikwete is a good influence. This is outstandingly better than any of the other countries in the survey. This is great news because Kikwete was democratically elected and the survey is thorough and independent. So, the findings are not the propaganda of a dictator, instead it is clear that Tanzanians have great confidence in their President.

Here’s hoping that Tanzania can maintain its strong economic growth under good leadership, so its children are, in fact, better off than their parents and grandparents.

If you’re not on a learning curve, you’re going nowhere.

Corruption and croneyism

A conference was held on 9 December by the Tanzanian Government to map out new strategies to tackle corruption. The conference will engage the Tanzanian Government and the key donor countries who contribute 41% of the Government’s annual income.

President Jakaya Kikwete

The anti-graft watchdog Transparency International (TI) pulled out of Tanzania citing the government's reluctance to wage a vigorous campaign against corruption. This underlined growing international unease with the manner in which President Kikwete has allowed corruption to fester despite official rhetoric about his government's determination to eliminate it.

Donors' indictment of President Kikwete followed a series of questionable decisions in the past 12 months that have resulted in economic performance hitting the lowest point in a decade in spite of increased infusion of aid. The low point came when all hydroelectric power plants closed causing an 18-hour daily electricity rationing. The economy is literally on its knees after manufacturing ground to a halt thanks to irregular supply of power - now reduced to less than six hours per day, seven days a week.

The one-year-old Kikiwete administration intends to persuade the donors that it has what it takes to turn around the wobbly economy. The forum is set to discuss the revised National Anti-Corruption Strategy and Action Plans (Nacsap), which was dismissed by donors as weak and ambiguous. The conference is expected to set benchmarks upon which the future donor funding would be pegged.

At the local level, the School of St Jude operates in a society where corruption is common at all levels. The School is careful to monitor and measure the goods that are provided by all kinds of suppliers to ensure that they are not over-charging. The fees charged by local officials for services (visa renewal, postal deliveries) seem to be flexible acccording to the perceived ability to pay.

I guess that at the local level, this kind of petty graft is driven largely by the desperate poverty of most lives. But at the higher levels where national government contracts are handed to friends and family, the motives are more like power and greed. And given the bad smell that lingers around the US Bush administration’s connections with favoured companies like Haliburton, it is clear that this doesn’t just happen in the poorest countries.

I hope that Tanzania can make some substantive progress on reducing corruption. When incompetent friends are favoured in important deals (e.g. electricity supply) then the whole nation suffers. Suffering in the poorest countries is a desperate business of deprivation and death, not just the kind of deprivation in First World countries, where people with only one television can feel ‘poor’.

Meanwhile, The School of St Jude spends all donations directly on providing excellent education to the poorest children for free. And it takes steps to ensure that its funds are not eaten up by the croneyism and featherbedding of local suppliers and officials.