By John Mashaka
In Summary
- We like easy ways out of our hardships. Our culture and educational system, cultivate our minds to seek shortcuts out of our difficulties.
- We do not engage in a realistic sense of determining cause and effect of issues affecting our lives and society.
Tanzania is one of the poorest countries in
terms of income per capita despite being one of the world’s richest when
it comes to natural resources. It is the third richest in the entire
continent behind South Africa and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Tanzania’s massive potential and endless
opportunities notwithstanding, the country remains donor dependant, with
its people living on the edge of poverty. Many theories and myths have
been out there for quite some time as to why Tanzanians are so poor. In
fact, we Tanzanians are poor because we are lazy.
We like easy ways out of our hardships. Our
culture and educational system, cultivate our minds to seek shortcuts
out of our difficulties. We do not engage in a realistic sense of
determining cause and effect of issues affecting our lives and society.
We are economically poor as a country because of
our long dependence on foreign hand-outs, which have in turn enslaved
our minds through a sense of entitlement. Despite abundant wealth, many
African countries have made it routine for Washington and London to
subsidize their budgets. We are remaining economically disadvantaged
because of an enemy called corruption, a product of greed and
selfishness. Tanzania lacks people with clear patriotic-sense
One would think that, with its strategic
geographical location and access to the Indian Ocean, Tanzania would be
an economic power. Others think that with its vast arable land and
water sources, Tanzania would never experience food shortage. With its
national parks, and other historical treasures, Tanzania would be a
Mecca of world tourism and Africa’s economic power. We are dead wrong.
Tanzania poverty paradox and potential to become an economic power is
slowly slipping away. Majority of Tanzanians do not have access to
quality education required to open up their minds into knowledge base,
and equip them with opportunities to explore, and discover other endless
possibilities necessary to create jobs and put people to work.
Inaccessibility to quality education is creating cyclic-generational
poverty among millions of Tanzanians, which further complicates the
untangling of the poverty paradox.
Foreigners have realized that our leaders and
intellectuals are mis-educated, and are therefore handing us candy-bars
at will in exchange for our resources. They are exploiting the cracks
within our poor education, culture of laziness and greed, and lack of
patriotism within our leadership structure to strip us of our natural
wealth.
Foreigners have discovered that the mis-educated
Tanzania’s political elites are more interested in nourishing their
Swiss-bank accounts, than dealing with the plight of poverty that has
engulfed the country. This is the reason why Tanzania is poor and will
continue to be poor
Tanzania is getting poorer because we are not
receptive of new revolutionary- minds that would foster economic
progress. The system wide kleptocrats are not welcoming of new
revolutionary brain-power. Their ineptness makes them feel vulnerable
and threatened, because they are products of a culture that lacks work
discipline. The late Dr Ferdinand Masau, founder of the Tanzania Heart
Institute (THI), is the sad and tragic case of how far Tanzania has to
go to accept a wave of new minds that will change the country and its
resources into a trillion dollar economy .
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