OF WHAT VALUE IS TANZANIA’S VAST WEALTH TO TANZANIANS?

Tanzania has abundance of wealth(Natural Resources),that includes wildlife, forestry, precious minerals, sunshine, large water bodies for ports and diverse of fish species. Despite that, Tanzania is ranked to be among the world class poorest countries, hence frequently prone to high infant and maternal mortalities, subsistence agriculture i.e. hand to mouth, poor infrastructure network, about 90% of its citizens use traditional energy resources based on bio-fuel that put the forestry resources in great peril, three quarters of its budget is dependent, only few children enrolled for primary education successfully complete. Above all, most of its citizens especially in rural areas are overwhelmed by impoverished life situation.

Many leaders when subjected to questions as to why Tanzania is poor in spite of its vast wealth in Natural Resources, they always end up saying because it was colonized. Surely this is not the feasible answer to that question because even before colonization the resources were present and still poverty predominated its societies.

The Ambassador of the Royal Norwegian Embassy, Hon: John Lomoy said that Tanzania is running poor because of its irresponsible leaders who lack spirit of patriotism for their country, thus use positions entitled to them for their own purposes; also Tanzania has marginally developed the civil society sector that would help to ensure that good policies are formulated and implemented. He suggested that the country needs a balanced solution that would help Tanzania to alleviate its pity impoverished conditions, he said that people should wake up and reject the myth of their generation’s apathy by putting into powers a strong government with good policies and laws that would collect tax effectively, impose modern technologies through internal and external investment, then the citizens should develop strong civil society organizations that would act as watchdogs when the government and private sectors fall apart from policies and laws of the territory. He concluded by saying that, development is all about making difficult choices for better decisions that come out of open discussions among the government, private sectors and civil societies with solutions that last for undiminished future prosperity of the country.

Tomas Chali.
tomaschali@yahoo.com