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Summary
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Special
emphasis must be put on science, technological and vocational training and
research
Dar es Salaam. At least six specific issues will have to be undertaken in the coming two decades to enable the creation of a Tanzania that Tanzanians aspire for as the work towards the
National Development Vision 2050 gets underway.The issues – highlighted by Vice
President Philip Mpango in Dodoma yesterday – come at a time when the National
Development Vision 2025, which was launched in 1999 to cater for Tanzania’s
development needs from 2000 to 2025, remains with only two years to go.
A number of achievements
The Permanent Secretary in the
Ministry of Finance and Planning, Dr Natu El-Maamry Mwamba, said during the
past 23 years of implementing Vision 2025, Tanzania has registered a number of
achievements.
Gracing the event, Dr Mpango, who
previously worked as the head of the Planning Commission, said the first thing
that the team – formed to kick-start the Vision 2050 preparation process will
need to do – was to look at ways of consolidating gains attained during the
implementation of Vision 2025.
He said the team will also have to
come up with ways by which Tanzania can make effective use of the available
opportunities while also grabbing new ones.
On the existing opportunities, said
Dr Mpango, special importance must be put on agriculture which, he said, has
the potential to turn Tanzania into a food basket for Africa and beyond.
“This will be possible if we decide
to boost our production of maize, wheat, barley, soybeans, sugar, cooking oil,
cashew nuts, fruits and vegetables among others,” said Dr Mpango, who was the
Minister for Finance and Planning before rising to become Vice President in
March 2021.
Existing opportunities
The existing opportunities also
entail raising Tanzania’s earnings from the livestock sub sector by upping
investments in processing factories for meat, skins and hides, milk and fodder
production.
A particular importance will also
have to be directed towards the fisheries sub-sector, including fish farming
and processing. The country, said Dr Mpango, could also earn handsomely by
making a good use of its forestry products. “This will need us to look at
timber, bee products and medicine processing factories,” he said.
In making proper use of the existing
opportunities, Dr Mpango also said the team will have to come up with ways to
up the addition of Tanzania’s products and minerals that were currently being
exported in raw form. The country will also have to come with a concrete plan
on how to harvest Tanzania’s strategic resources that would hasten the
industrialisation process, including natural gas deposits. “We have natural gas
and therefore, we need to build a Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) plant;
petrochemical processing factories including fertiliser and coal and iron ore
[including Mchuchuma and Liganga],” he said.
Tanzania also has nickel deposits
which could be used in setting up a battery factory.
“We have soda ash for the glass
industry. We also have helium gas in Lake Rukwa for the processing of hospital
equipment like MRI [Magnetic Resonance Imaging]. We have rare earth elements
for high tech industries like production of smartphones, digital cameras,
computers and television sets among others,” he said.
Apart from a youthful population
that gives Tanzania enough human resource to boost economic growth going
forward, the country is also strategically located so much so that it is well
positioned to become the hub of transport and logistics in the great lake
region. Tourism, commercialisation of Kiswahili and the creative industry are
also the issues that will have to be put to proper use as planners plan Vision
2050.
The third aspect that planners will
have to seriously consider as they plan Tanzania’s development path to 2050,
according to Dr Mpango, is giving priority to education. “On this, special
emphasis must be put on science, technical and vocational training, research
and development as well as innovation to boost the productivity of the
country’s manpower,” said Dr Mpango.
Domesticating technology that would
boost productivity in all sectors of economic production must also be seriously
considered. This, he said, was important if Tanzania was to effectively cushion
the impact of climate change. Getting into partnerships would also help
Tanzania to leapfrog its competitors with much ease.
The development planners will also
have to precisely outline the resources that will be required to effectively
implement Vision 2050 along with coming up with a concrete follow up mechanism
in line with the laid down Key Performance Indicators.
Asian countries
It is Dr Mpango’s view that the team
currently working on the preparations of Vision 2050 will find time to go and
learn from countries that have managed to boost their economic growth rates
since 1960s, including from Asian countries. “They should learn how the
countries managed to defeat the middle income trap and moved forward,” he said.
The middle income trap is largely the result of a country’s inability to
continue the process of moving from low value-added to high value-added
industries.
“Key to this must be on how this
plan can move us from our current development stage to the next one,” he said.
He told the members appointed to
conduct the exercise to ensure that they talk to all relevant people across the
economic divide and come up with a vision that will carry the aspirations of a
Tanzania that people need.
The six issues, said Dr Mpango will
ensure that Tanzania builds its economy further on the foundation of its lower
middle income status which it attained in 2020.
They will also help the country to
defeat some of the challenges it encountered during the implementation of
Vision 2025.
The challenges include the presence
of reasonable population of Tanzanians that still lives below the income
poverty level and the growing income gap among Tanzanians despite doing well in
the GDP growth rate. Tanzania’s income inequality – as measured by the Gini
coefficient – rose from 0.34 percent in 2011/12 to 0.38 percent in 2017/18.
Besides, according to the 2022
demographic and health survey, 30 percent of under five children in Tanzania
face retardation and that nine percent of them have severe retardation.
Vision 2025 focused on five key
areas of building high quality livelihood, maintaining peace, stability and
unity, building good governance, creating a well-educated and learning society
as well as building a competitive economy that is capable of producing
sustainable growth and shared benefits.
But while the country has registered
several achievements in almost all parameters, there were still several issues
that the country needed to do to realise the dream of a prosperous Tanzania.
“While we have managed to raise
enrolment rates at different education levels and raised the literacy rate to
about 92 percent of the population, the new challenge is that not all students
who complete their education in various levels get the chance to be absorbed
into the job opportunities that the economy offers,” said Dr Mpango
Competitive economy
On the building of a competitive
economy, Dr Mpango said Tanzania’s economy was not very competitive and that
the country still needed to build the trust and confidence of investors. This,
he said, was being done through improving the investment and business climate.
Besides, the government’s budget is
dependent on development partners’ support by 13 percent. In the same vein, he
said, Tanzania’s capacity to mitigate the impacts of climate change was also
low.
“This has to a great extent affected
the productivity in the farming and livestock keeping sub-sectors and the
delivery of social services such as water and electricity….,” he said.
Detailing some of the achievements
during the implementation of Vision 2025, Dr Mwamba said apart from graduating
to the lower middle income status in 2020, poverty levels in Tanzania have also
declined by over nine percent from 35.7 percent in 2000/21 fiscal year to 24.6
percent in 2017/18.
She also detailed some achievements
in the health sector, including a drop in maternal and children mortality rates
as well as a rise in access to water, education and electricity services among
others.
She, however, noted that Tanzania,
just like all other countries in the world, has gone through some challenging
times during the past two decades. The key challenges include the 2008 global
economic crisis, the 2019 global Covid-19 pandemic, climate change and the
ongoing war in Ukraine.
Tarmac roads
Finance and Planning minister, Dr
Mwigulu Nchemba said prior to Vision 2025, very few regions were connected by a
tar-marc road.
“You can now move from Dodoma to all
corners of the country on a tar-mark road which is contrary to where we were
almost 25 years ago….,” he said.
About 25 years ago, said Dr Nchemba,
Tanzania’s monthly revenue collections stood at an average of Sh30 billion. The
amount has since risen to over Sh2 trillion.
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