Organic cotton producers – photo Assah Mwambene

TANZANIA’S cotton industry contributes about 21% of foreign exchange earnings and employs vast numbers of people. Now, a project initiated by the Tanzanian High Commission in London, has been started in Handeni for the cultivation of organic cotton. Organic cotton cultivation brings many advantages – there is increased productivity on farms and higher income for farmers from the sale of the certified cotton; as fertilisers and insecticides are not used there is no pollution of soil and water. The project has been given 100 acres and some 400 farmers registered in March 2005 in the ‘Handeni Organic Farmers’ Association’. Each member signed a contract governing the correct production of the cotton. The project is also sponsoring training and provision of other forms of assistance to the local people.
In 2003 organic textiles sales in Britain increased by 48% compared with the year before. Most of it is used in baby wear and women’s wear.

About 177,000 Tanzanians contracted HIV last year, according to the Tanzania Commission for Aids (TACAIDS). Seven per cent of all persons aged 15 to 49 on the Mainland were infected. This made Tanzania among the 12 worst affected countries in the world,
The country has been hailed however as a success story in its harmonisation of HIV/Aids and poverty reduction strategies. The accolades were given by the World Bank Institute (WBI) during a video conference
in Washington DC which was viewed at the Institute of Finance Management (IFM)’s Global Development Learning Center in Dar es
Salaam. Dr. Joseph Annan of the UNDP commended the role played by TACAIDS in the management of donor funds in poverty eradication.

Some months ago an NGO, HakiElimu, published an article on the state of education in Tanzania which the then Minister of Education considered to be biased and over critical. The government suspended its operations. HakiElimu’s Chairperson protested that its reports were meant to identify education challenges and bottlenecks to allow relevant authorities to address them. She emphasised that HakiElimu was an independent organisation with a clear mandate under the terms of its registration. Just before TA went to the printer the Guardian reported that the government had stated that it was willing to extend an ‘amnesty’ and to lift the ban imposed on HakiElimu if it apologized for what was described as ‘ridiculing government efforts in development of the education sector in the country.’ But in her rejoinder, Hellen Kijo-Bisimba, Legal and Human Rights Centre (LHRC) Executive Director and former board member of HakiElimu said the claims against the NGO lacked substance.
It is understood that negotiations are under way to try and resolve the deadlock.

Tanzania, with the support of USAID and the German Technical Development Agency (GTZ), has stepped up surveillance of migratory birds following the first confirmed case of avian influenza, subtype H5N1, in Nigerian poultry. Three to five million birds have already been sighted in Tanzania during their annual migration southwards from Asia and central Europe, where they may have been in contact with birds carrying the virus. Because migration is an ongoing, cyclical process, the birds flying back up north in the spring may infect birds in Europe and birds coming back in the fall may infect birds in Africa. Villagers who raise free-range poultry are easily exposed to droppings from migrating wild aquatic and shore birds. Tanzania has established a comprehensive surveillance programme that will allow health and veterinary officials to launch effective and appropriate disease prevention and control measures quickly in case of an outbreak. Wild bird surveillance is currently being conducted by the Tanzania Bird Atlas Project, with oversight from the Tanzania Wildlife Research Institute.” – Guardian.

by Jacob Knight

The Kamusi Project website

The Yale University ‘Kamusi Project’ www.yale.edu/swahili/ has hosted an online Kiswahili–English dictionary since 1995. It is a well used resource and a live dictionary which anyone can add new words
to.

However, until now, learners of Kiswahili have had a fundamental difficulty when using any dictionary. In English and other European languages, the end of words may be changed according to the tense etc, but a learner looking to translate say “needed” should be able to find “need” in a dictionary without too many problems. In Kiswahili, however, numerous prefixes and infixes are added to the beginning of words, so to translate say nitaenda the student had to know that this is
from verb -enda before they could look anything up in the dictionary. To translate atakapopigwa they needed to know firstly that this is from verb -pigwa and secondly that it is a passive form of the verb -piga. Continue reading →

Among recent donations of aid to Tanzania have been 18 million euros (TShs 25.3bn/-) in budget support and for help in the fight against HIV/Aids from Germany; from Italy 2 million euros (TShs 2.8 billion) for HIV/AIDS control; from the US $700,000 (TShs 850 million) for help in monitoring bird flu; TShs 11 million from Norway for rural electrification; Korea $20 million (over TShs 20bn/-) to finance training of trainers, the construction of vocational training centres (VTCs) and information technology centres (ITCs) in Dar es Salaam; and, from Britain £700,000 (TShs 1.4 billion) for famine relief. Britain has also announced that it will provide £310 million over the next three years to support the Strategy for Growth and Reduction of Poverty (Mkukuta). DfID is the largest bilateral contributor of budget support to Tanzania having provided £330m over the last six years, including £85 million this financial year.