Tanzania and UN in joint jobs plan

By The Citizen Reporter
Dar es Salaam.In an attempt to address the irony of high poverty levels in the midst of plenty, the United Nations has launched a project to help Tanzanians access more opportunities for economic growth.Tanzania’s economy has been growing steadily from 4.9 per cent in 2000 to about 7 per cent last year to be among the fastest growing economies on the continent.

The country has also large inflows of foreign direct investments in mining, oil and gas exploration and tourism. All that notwithstanding, poverty has only declined marginally from 35.7 per cent in 2000 to 33.6 per cent 2011.

“Tanzania is rich in resources, but the vast majority of Tanzanians are poor,” the United Nations Development Assistance Plan (UNDAP) report released last week says. “Much growth, however, has occurred in sectors where employment generation is low, particularly mining and tourism.”

The report noted that sectors whose growth has declined such as agriculture and the informal economy, provide much of the employment, which however, does not pay much.About 500,000 new employment opportunities are created every year, most of them from agriculture and the informal economy.

Agriculture accounts for one-quarter of the gross domestic product (total wealth of the country), 85 per cent of experts and employs nearly 80 per cent of the workforce, most of them women.

“However returns in this backbone sector have been very low due to low agriculture investment and lack of access to farm inputs, extension services, credit, modern technology application, trade and marketing support.

To help Tanzanians benefit from the bustling economy the UN in Tanzania has launched a project to enable government ministries, departments, agencies and local government authorities to better manage the economy. The project would also promote equal access to economic opportunities, improve trade and use natural resources better to promote job creation.

The UN’s project is known as Economic Growth Working Group. Through the project several government ministries have made assessments analysing the employment creation potential in their policies and programme.

“This has served as an important policy exercise to facilitate government’s channelling of resources through sectors and programmes that can yield better jobs, mainly for young people,” the UN Report said.

The UN’s project comes at a time when unemployment is increasing driven by rural-urban migration of youth who run from low paying agriculture and poor social services in rural areas to better services in towns and cities.
As part of efforts to improve labour productivity and employment creation, a review of the existing labour market information systems has been undertaken through the project.

The UN project also comes amidst efforts by the government to try to learn from the Asian Tigers countries that achieved economic miracles within short periods of time.It was reported this week that a 30-member team of Malaysian experts are coaching 300 Tanzanian experts on how the country can move forward by implementing six priority areas articulated in the Tanzania National Development Vision 2025.

The Development Vision 2025 was developed in the 1990s and came into operation in 2000. The Vision 2025 outlines broad national long-term goals, perspectives and aspirations. In 2009, Planning Commission conducted a study to review the implementation of the Vision 2025 with a view of assessing what has been done so far, identify gaps and propose the way forward.

Mr Chris Tan, director for Performance Management and Delivery Unit (Pemandu), a Malaysian government agency said at a workshop on Wednesday that training by Malaysians focused on six priority areas identified by the government of Tanzania.

Other areas are agriculture, education, water, energy, transport and resource mobilisation, priorities articulated in the Vision 2025.

Malaysian experts on these areas were coaching their Tanzanian counterparts from ministries, government departments and agencies, and the private sector under guidance from the Planning Commission.“The process began after it was approved by the Tanzanian cabinet. We held a meeting with ministers in Dodoma in August last year,” Mr Tan told The Citizen.

In fact even in the UNDAP the UN has provided inputs to help improve the Tanzania Long-Term Perspective Plan (LTPP), 2011/12-2025/26 and the Roadmap to a Middle Income Country.