Tanzania: things sort of work

Still in Tanzania!  But the last few days I was in Arusha, where I had a truly awful internet connection, and so could not post.

Couple of quick, general thoughts.

-- They missed a bullet with the tribal thing.  Tanzania -- unlike Congo or Kenya -- has a really strong sense of nation.  Kenyans are likely to say "I am Kikuyu" or "I am Luo" before "I am Kenyan", and this has had really poisonous effects on the country's politics.  (And let me pause here to recommend Michela Wrong's wonderful book It's Our Turn To Eat, which goes into detail about why this is so, and why it is bad, and how much evil has flowed from it.)  Congo, same-same.  But Tanzania, nobody much cares what tribe you're from.

This is one of the great positive legacies of the late Julius Nyerere, who ruled Tanzania for its first 25 years of independence.  Nyerere had his little quirks -- he was a romantic socialist who ran the country's economy into the ground -- but he got the tribal thing superbly right.  Okay, he was helped by the facts that (1) the tribes in Tanzania tend to be smaller but more numerous than the large groups in Kenya, so that no tribe had more than maybe 10% of the population, and (2) almost all the tribes already shared a common second language (Swahili).  Still, it was an impressive achievement, and a truly admirable legacy.

(I heard the difference between Kenya and Tanzania summed up like so: "After independence, Kenya built an economy.  Tanzania built a society.")

-- They've missed... well, partly missed a bullet, on corruption.  (Can you partly miss a bullet?  Grazing, light flesh wound?)

I mean, Tanzania has corruption.  No question.  We are in Africa. 

But compared to Kenya or Congo?  It's Sweden.  You can conduct your business without being harassed by inspectors looking for bribes.  A truckload of produce can travel across the country without being stopped by cops demanding a handout.  Foreign investors do not have to accept a Minister's nephew as a "local partner" in order to do business.

Talk to businessmen -- which is pretty much all I've been doing for the last ten days -- and you'll hear that taxes are a problem.  Finding competent people is a problem.  The sluggish, bureaucratic, not-really-business-friendly government is a problem.  Constant theft and pilfering and the need to spend money on guards and fences; difficulties with getting credit from the banks; the bad roads, the electricity that goes off, the general shoddy state of infrastructure... problems. 

But what you don't hear, or at least right off, is that corruption is a problem.  If you raise the issue, you'll hear that it exists, but it's usually not even in the top five.  And when you ask them to describe how it works, much of what you hear is dinky stuff -- slipping a tax inspector a few hundred bucks to settle an outstanding dispute, type of thing.  I mean, yes, that's bad, but it's not the kind of shakedown / protection stuff that just kills investment dead.

Or the port.  The port of Dar Es Salaam deserves a post of its own, but here's the short version: it used to be horribly congested, totally dysfunctional.  So the port authority made an aggressive effort to fix the problem.  And now it just somewhat sucks.  It's still a bad, congested port where containers may take weeks to process, leading to annoying storage fees and possibly the loss of perishables.  But it's no longer a godawful port where everything always takes weeks or months to process, and may disappear altogether.  It's gone from horrible to just bad.  That's real progress.

Noel Maurer raises the issue of a foreign private company taking over Customs.  That's unlikely to happen in Tanzania, for the simple reason that Tanzania's Customs system kinda works.  It's not very good, and it's certainly not very fast, and there are problems with corruption, collections, data accuracy, competence of the customs agents... you name it.  But there's a big difference between something that works, albeit not very well, and something that doesn't.  In Tanzania, things work.  Sort of.

Here's a comparison: if you look at a list of countries by per capita GDP (PPP adjusted), Tanzania comes out a little bit ahead of Haiti.  But Tanzania just doesn't give off the same vibe of deep dysfunction.  N.B., I have never been to Haiti.  But I know a lot of people who have.  Even the ones who like it concede that it's a very troubled place.  Well, Tanzania too, but... not the same.

One big difference between the two: Tanzania has one of the lowest Gini coefficients in Africa, or indeed in the developing world.  At 34.6, it's around the low end of the EU, comparable to the United Kingdom or Poland.  By way of comparison, Kenya's Gini is 44.5, and Haiti's is 59.  Tanzania has, by African standards, an incredibly flat distribution of wealth.  This probably goes a long way towards explaining why, while Tanzania is certainly very poor, it doesn't feel as poor as the raw numbers might suggest.

So, another point for Nyerere.  We'll talk about some of the less positive aspects of the Great Teacher's legacy later, time permitting.

Comments

[kichwa kikubwa]

[snip an angry Kenyan]

No, I don't speak much Swahili, but I know what "jinga" means.

Comment here is free but moderated; no insulting each other, or the host. Manners, please.

Doug M.

[kichwa kikubwa]

You have no evidence that I am a Kenya nor that I am angry. However, I'm surprised you didn't accuse me of being a Kikuyu, Luo, or Dorobo for that matter. I find it ironic that Kenyans are proud to identify themselves as Kenyans and Africans but you seem to play into the same mzungu divide and rule game to remind Africans which tribe they are.It's pretty clear you haven't been to Kenya or you would realize that you can't compare Kenya to the DRC in terms of corruption. From what I've seen you could compare TZ to the DRC but not Kenya. I would encourage you to actually go to Kenya and interact with people than judge the country from what Ms. Wrong from the notes she dictated from Githongo's misinformed rantings and have those judgments confirmed from Tanzania where people have been disempowered by an autocratic state so desperate for foreign exchange for that it encourages it's people to lower their dignity to satisfy foreign theories and egos. If you've read Wrong's other books you should notice she writes in a very different tone (still with the gaze of a tourist pretending to be a journalist than her Githongo story). It's clear Githongo wrote the book to justify his own ego and alleviate neo-colonial guilt. In the past Tanzania was demonized by the West the way Kenya is today, because it like Kenya today defied the West. The difference is Kenya has a strong enough economy and educated middle class that it is not easily shaken by whims of the west I firmly believe you censored my comments because they expose the truth rather, and its a truth no one will confront you about in Tanzania or in the privileged circles you experience in the U.S. and through the gaze of a tourist.

[mohamed]

KENYA GOVERNMENT HAS STRONG ECONOMY BUT U PEOPLE LIVING IN POOR CONDITION COMPARE TANZANIAN PEOPLE

[Vuminyembe]

I have read the post on Tanzania. I am from swaziland and hav worked in Arush for almost two years. I have travelled in many African countries and Asia. I do believe that things in Tanzania do work and that the coruption that is there is usually unccessary. Sometimes it peope offering an officer unsolicited bribes. Even though the officer was still going to perform his/her duties. There is corruption that you meet in many government sevice points ( Not Sweden though). People even in Swaziland they negotiate to pay a bribe instead of a traffic fine. Even when the police officer has not asked for it. South Africa the same. Tanzania is a growing economy with a raising well educated middle class. To me I can compare it with India in the early 90's. The politics is getting right. Democracy does not get it wrong in a long run, it needs an educated mass to be effective. There is a problem with the assumed power of the army and the fear it exert on the citizens. It is more abstract than real. I loved Tanzania and Kenya. In Kenya you can see and feel the vibrancy of the citizens, just like in South Arica. In Tanzania you can feel the determination to progress. There is a lot of mis teaching of Nyerere that the people need to acknowledge with the same zeal they accept his good teachings. Tanzania need to be honest with its past mistakes inorder to move forward with more determination. I do think tribes create wars and social unrest. It is the political structures and biased economic practices. Kiswahili or Kiswahili Tanzania was not going to be like other Africa countries. The Kikuyu or Luo did not have problems because of their tribal differences, it is how political power was used to apportion state resources (eg Land in the rift valley)

[Vuminyembe]

I have read the post on Tanzania. I am from Swaziland and have worked in Arusha for almost two years. I have travelled in many African countries and Asia. I do believe that things in Tanzania do work and that the corruption that is there is usually unnecessary. Sometimes it is people offering an officer an unsolicited bribe. Even though the officer was going to perform his/her duties regardless of the ‘soda’. There is corruption that you meet in many government service points ( Not in Sweden though). People, even in Swaziland they negotiate to pay a bribe instead of a traffic fine, even when the police officer has not asked for it, you find the same thing in South Africa. Tanzania is a growing economy with a emerging, well educated middle class. To me I can compare it with India in the early 90's. The politics is getting right. Democracy does not get it wrong in a long ran, it needs an educated mass to be effective. There is a problem with the assumed power of the army and the fear it exert on the citizens. It is more abstract than real. I love Tanzania and Kenya. In Kenya you can see and feel the vibrancy of the citizens, just like in South Arica. In Tanzania you can feel the determination to progress just like in India. There is a lot of mis-teachings of Nyerere that the people of Tanzania need to acknowledge with the same zeal they accept his good teachings. Tanzania need to be honest with itself about its past mistakes in order to move forward with more determination. I do not think tribes create wars and social unrest. It is the political structures and biased economic practices. Kiswahili or no Kiswahili Tanzania was not going to be like other Africa countries (Angola, Mozambique, DRC, Rwanda etc. The Kikuyu or Luo did not have problems because of their tribal differences; it is how political power was used to apportion state resources (e.g. Land in the rift valley)