by Ben Taylor
In late 2022, the parliament of Tanzania enacted the Personal Data Protection Act – broadly an equivalent to the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) of the European Union and the UK Data Protection Act. The Act spells out the responsibilities for any organisation that handles personal data of private individuals in Tanzania and provides for the establishment of a Personal Data Protection Commission.

The law is yet to come into force, however, as it requires both Presidential assent and for the Minister of Information, Communication and Information Technology to publish notice in the official government gazette stating the date when the Act will take effect.

The new law means Tanzania joins her East Africa Community (EAC) peers, Kenya, Uganda, and Rwanda, that already had Data Protection Acts in place. It will help the country participate in the global digital economy, as many countries have restrictions on doing business in jurisdictions that lack protections for data privacy.

Among other things, the law requires that all data processors and handlers must appoint a personal data protection officer, and outlines criminal sanctions and fines for those who breach the legislation.

The Personal Data Protection Commission established by the Act is tasked with registration of data collectors and processors, monitoring the compliance of data collectors and processors with the Act, handling complaints on the breach of data protection and the right to privacy, and researching and monitoring technological development in relation to data processing.

Any person or organisation that intends to collect or process data in Tanzania will need to be registered by the Commission. The Act also specifies that personal information may only be collected where necessary and for a legitimate purpose. To ensure accuracy of information, the Act places a duty on data collectors to take necessary steps to confirm that data collected is complete, correct and consistent with the purpose for which it was collected.

Disclosure of personal data without consent is punishable by a fine of up to TSh 5 billion (approx. USD $2.1m) for the institution responsible, and/or imprisonment for up to ten years for the individuals – including responsible officers within an institution.

The Act does not prohibit the transfer of personal data to jurisdictions outside the country, provided that such jurisdictions have a reliable legal system for the protection of personal data, and the transfer is necessary for a legitimate or public interest.

The Act also lays out the rights of individuals with respect to data held about them. This includes the right to be informed of data collection and processing as well as the purpose involved, the right to access the data collected and processed, the right to object the processing of personal data collected where such processing will lead to adverse impacts, the right to rectify personal data to ensure its accuracy, and the right not to be subject to automated decision making.

Stakeholders have given a cautious welcome to the new law. Maxence Melo, the founder of Jamii Forums, a popular Tanzanian online forum, said the law had been a long time coming, considering that the dream for the bill dates back to 2014. Melo added that it is important to foster data residency, meaning that personal data should be stored within the country, as a measure to ensure the data met regional and international data privacy standards.

However, others have expressed concerns that the law does not require the subjects of data security breaches to be notified, and that it imposes unnecessarily heavy restrictions on even small organisations handling small amounts of data about – for example – job applicants, beneficiaries of charitable work, or school students.

by Ben Taylor
Tanzanian citizen dies fighting in Ukraine
Nenes Tarimo, a Tanzanian citizen fighting for Russia in the Donbas region of Ukraine, has died at the age of 33. His family received official notification in December from the Tanzanian Embassy in Moscow.

According to family members, Tarimo had been serving a prison term for a drug related case. In return for a promise of his release from prison after six months of fighting in the battlefield, he was given the oppor­tunity to join the Wagner Group, variously described as a paramilitary organisation, private military contractors and Vladimir Putin’s de facto private army.

“He informed us that he was joining the war against Ukraine. We begged him not to join but he said you never know if I will get my free­dom so he joined, and the last time we contacted him was October 17 and he was no longer reachable,” a relative told The Citizen newspaper.

They say that Tarimo had originally travelled to Russia for postgraduate studies at the Russian Academy of Technology, MIREA.

by Ben Taylor
Rishi Sunak’s Tanzanian connections
The United Kingdom’s latest Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, has roots in Tanzania. His maternal grandparents lived in Tanzania before moving to Britain in the 1960s, reportedly in response to post-independence rules that required non-citizens to either take citizenship or leave the country.

In his book, Going For Broke: The Rise of Rishi Sunak, published in 2020, Lord Michael Ashcroft described Sunak’s maternal grandmother, Sraksha, as someone with extraordinary courage and vision: “a remark­able woman who grew up in rural Africa and gambled everything she held dear to give her children a better life”.

Sraksha was born to Hindu Punjabi parents in Tanzania. She learned Swahili as a child and considered Africa her home, although her family retained close ties with India. At the age of 16, she entered an arranged marriage with Rishi’s grandfather, Raghubir Berry, a railway engineer from Punjab then working in Tanzania, according to the biography.

She persuaded her new husband to build a new life in Africa, and Raghubir found a job as a tax official in Tanzania, where they raised three children: Rishi’s mother, Usha, and her two younger brothers.

In 1966, Rishi’s grandmother sold all of her wedding jewellery and bought a one-way ticket to the UK, leaving her husband and three chil­dren behind in Tanzania in the hope that they would one day be able to join her. There were no family or friends to greet her, but Sraksha made her way to Leicester and rented a room as a paying guest of a distant acquaintance.

She found a job as a bookkeeper with an estate agent, where she started saving every penny, and a year later was finally able to pay for her husband and children, including Usha, then 15, to join her.

Usha went on to study pharmacology at Aston University, where she was introduced by mutual friends to Yashvir Sunak. Sunak was a medi­cal student who had recently graduated from Liverpool University and whose upper-middle-class Punjabi family had moved to Britain from Nairobi during his young adulthood.

When Sunak became Prime Minister, some citizens in Kenya and Tanzania, especially those of Indian descent were proud to see a man whose parents were born and raised in their territory take up the UK’s top political office. “It’s another Obama moment for us,” said one resi­dent of Kisumu, Kenya.

Patel Suri, a Tanzanian investor of Indian descent based in Dar es Salaam told Quartz online magazine, “Indians are smart people. You will find them playing the role of CEO in many big tech companies across the world. Rishi Sunak is no different. He is intelligent and the right choice for prime minister at this point of the country’s political and economic challenges.”

Mr David Concar, the new High Commissioner (photo FCO)

A new British High Commissioner for the UK in Tanzania, Mr David Concar, took up his post in August.

Mr Concar previously served as Director of Protocol at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO), as UK Ambassador in Mogadishu, Somalia between 2016 and 2019, and as the FCO head of international organisations department and commonwealth envoy between 2014 and 2016. He also worked as the FCO’s head of climate change and energy department between 2012 and 2014 and from 2006 to 2012 as the counsellor responsible for prosperity, climate change and energy, science and innovation in Beijing, China. Before joining the FCO he was a science journalist.

Mr Concar tweeted that he was “really excited to be returning to Africa, to start work with the UK’s wonderful team at the High Commission.” He replaces Sarah Cooke, who had served as UK High Commissioner in Dar es Salaam since 2016, during a time of sometimes strained relations between the diplomatic community and the government of Tanzania. Over this period, western diplomats in Tanzania have grown increasingly concerned about declining respect for democracy and the rule of law in the country, and have on occasion spoken out publicly with their criticism of the Tanzanian government.

Ms Cooke’s departure comes shortly after she attracted some controversy in Tanzania by meeting with opposition leader Zitto Kabwe of the ACT Wazalendo party. The Registrar of Political Parties wrote to Mr Kabwe demanding assurance that the meeting did not violate Section 6C(4) of the Political Parties Act, Cap 258. The Registrar’s office says the law prohibits non-citizens from holding meetings with leaders of Tanzanian political parties. ACT General Secretary Ado Shaibu responded by saying that “they held private talks, after all, he (Kabwe) is free to meet any person and talk about anything as provided under the country’s constitution.”

Network marketing in Tanzania turns billionaire dreams into night­mares · Global Voices

This story by GV Sub-Saharan Africa originally appeared on Global Voices on Jun 28, 2020 – see https://globalvoices.org/2020/06/28/network-marketing-in­tanzania-turns-billionaire-dreams-into-nightmares/

Everyone desires financial stability, but young people often want to quicken their path to a successful life — and this is exactly what network marketing companies promise.

Over the last five years in Tanzania, network marketing companies, also known as multi-level marketing, have mushroomed in the East African nation. These companies lure young people with “get-rich-quick” dreams that depend on person-to-person sales of products purchased upfront by the seller. Many schemes also rely on the seller’s aggressive recruitment of other independent sales associates.

While technically legal, their interactions with potential customers raise concerns about how these companies prey on vulnerable youth and their billionaire dreams.

“I can assure you, the products are very expensive, which do not reflect the lives of third-world communities,” Traves Msangule, a former network marketer in Dar es Salaam, told Global Voices by phone.

Msangule was a university student in 2013 when a close friend convinced him to join Forever Living Products, a health and wellness company, to help him make some extra money to pay for his studies. Msangule did not have a government loan to cover his school fees, so he agreed to join.

To get started, Msangule had to buy a package of products worth about $320 United States dollars that he then had to re-sell in the hopes of doubling his profit.

The gospel of network marketing schemes is that recruiting new customers will increase earnings — but this is no easy task.

“Take an example: If a toothpaste from the package is sold at $12 USD, while [in reality] there is a toothpaste sold at $1.20 USD, who is going to buy yours? Though the products are of high quality, it’s very difficult to compete,” Msangule said.

Network marketers promote smart, fake lifestyles to persuade people of their success, while in reality, very few people are “eating the cake” of network marketing.

Msangule explained his stressful ordeal in a Twitter thread: “So, when I climbed to that rank, I had to complete points (product sales) for myself and the team. There we were put on a mindset to “push up” in every way until it was understood not to give up. So, I had to start calling to borrow money that night. The deadline was midnight.”

Msangule told Global Voices: “These guys, first of all, are trained to discourage formal employment and small business [self-employment]. They will keep [asking] you: When will you get enough money? The only alternative is this part-time job, which deals with chatting with people, and you can earn millions in just a few weeks and you will be financially stable.”

Unfortunately, in 2017, Msangule had to postpone his studies for a year because this “chatting with people” business consumed his time. With over $750 invested in these products, he had to make sure to earn his profit. When he realized this was not going to happen, he quit.

Network marketing takes off in Tanzania
Network marketing companies that thrive in Tanzania, such as AIM Global, Forever Living Products, Oriflame, QNet, Avon and Edmark, are part of a $200 billion USD global industry as of 2015.

In 2017, QNet, one of the largest direct-selling companies in the world based in Hong Kong, expanded its operations in East Africa, with an agency office in Dar es Salaam, the cultural capital of Tanzania. Thousands of Tanzanian citizens “have registered to market and promote QNet online products…” according to BusinessForHome, an industry website.
AIM Global, based in the Philippines, took hold in Tanzania in 2019 and just celebrated its one-year anniversary with over 4,000 independent distributors.

Many of the companies say they offer extensive professional training, coaching and education to ensure success, including conferences and reward point systems for top sellers.

Top-selling products in Tanzania include health and wellness products, household goods and luxury products.

Naivety, greed, peer pressure
On June 21, the famous actor and comedian, Idriss Sultan, took to Twitter with a video explaining the ills of network marketing in Tanzania, detailing how these companies exploit young people toiling hard with “sweat and blood” to improve their lives.

He opens with the phrase, “Good morning future billionaire, good morning business partner!” a famous network marketing line:

“This video I’ve done in one [single] take and I haven’t cut any part out. It will educate everyone and to those who may get offended by it, fine then, I have no issue, but to say: ‘Let the citizens who earn their money by their sweat benefit from the fruits of their money and not you and your children.’”

Without naming a specific company, Sultan says the mushrooming of the network marketing model in Tanzania – with their various colourful, flashy names – is a threat to young peoples’ lives.

Youth often fail to resist these ploys because they have respect for those who pressure them to join. These companies also use famous people to promote their brands who wield a lot of influence and power.

Sultan said in his video: “…Young people are working very hard, their money is a result of very, very hard work, so it is unacceptable to allow someone from nowhere to come with this system that exploits people.”

Other netizens wrote about their own experience with network marketing: “Certain women’s groups in Dar, — they were my friends — and they bothered me a lot to join these businesses, but I did not agree to join quickly, meaning, I was not able to understand what were they doing exactly? I was afraid to invest my money and also, I calculated what they really earned…”

A lack of information and a thirst for shortcuts can be a dangerous mix for young people who hustle and work hard to improve their lives in Tanzania, where the average monthly income is about $150-$215 USD. A 2017 study by Theobald Francis Kipilimba on the effect of pyramid schemes on the economy in Tanzania revealed:

“…most Tanzanians are very naïve when it comes to pyramid schemes, with very scant knowledge about these schemes. Many do not know if they have participated in these schemes but in those instances that they had, they suffered huge financial losses. …”

“As to the reasons as to why they participated in these schemes in the first place range from pure naivety, personal greed and peer pressure.”
The Tanzanian government has allotted 10% of total revenue toward interest-free loans for youth, women and people with disabilities but these groups remain vulnerable to predatory promises posed by network marketing companies.

Mangi Meli – Photo courtesy of Deutsche Fotothek

Traces of Chief Mangi Meli of the Chagga community in Old Moshi can still be found in songs, stories and archives. But his head is missing. As chief for a little under a decade, Mangi Meli fought the German colonial occupation of territory in Kilimanjaro. He was executed for his resistance on March 2, 1900, by hanging in a public square.

His head was then cut off and said to have been shipped to Berlin, Germany at the request of the Ethnological Museum’s Head of Africa and Oceania department Felix von Luschan. Von Luschan collected thousands of skulls from all over the world for scientific testing based on Rassenlehre – racial ideology.

For the past 50 years, Isaria Meli has been campaigning through the Meli Foundation, appealing to the Tanzanian and German governments to seek the return of his grandfather’s skull.

His efforts have finally paid off – in part. Chief Mangi Meli’s story has been brought to the attention of the German government through an exhibition in Berlin. This was centred around a video installation titled Mangi Meli Remains – an innovative short film animation in Kiswahili, German and English on the life, times and death of the chief, his links with other chiefs in the resistance to German colonial rule and the events leading to his death.

After the exhibition closed in Berlin, it moved temporarily to Dar es Salaam before reaching its permanent home in Old Moshi, where it opened in March 2019 at the Old Courthouse.

Along with the video, the exhibition includes documents and photographs of the Chagga people and chief Mangi Meli taken in the late 1800s to the early 1900s by colonial German army officers, and never previously displayed in Tanzania.

The exhibition is the work of German national Konradin Kunze and the Tanzanian Sarita Mamseri. Mamseri is a heritage educator with a Masters in History of Art & Archaeology, while Kunze, a German national, is a theatre producer with Flinn Works.

Mangi Meli (centre) with two Chagga officials – photo courtesy of Deutsche Fotothek

The idea for the exhibition started when Kunze started researching German colonial history in Tanzania. “When I first came to Tanzania eight years ago, I was shocked to learn about my country’s colonial history. I didn’t learn it in school back in Germany, which would have been the proper way, I think. We maybe had just about one hour of it because ‘Germany had some colonies but it was for a short period.’’’

“The objective of this project is definitely to educate the public. This story should not be forgotten and on the other hand, it is giving back to the community by permanently install something in Old Moshi, although it is not the chief’s skull, which we’re still trying to find. However, at least we can bring back the information that I have gathered back in Germany,” Kunze added.

Kunze thinks the photographs he found, as well the archived material in Germany (such as http://www.deutschefotothek.de/list/freitext/hans+meyer), should be readily available in Tanzania since it is a crucial part of the country’s history too.

Mamseri concurs, saying, “The atrocities, tragedies and theft, looting, and acquisition of personal items of significance and of human remains cannot be undone or indeed forgotten when still so much is to be acknowledged and then repatriated. It also continues to amaze me how much of Tanzania’s history can be found in foreign collections, both private and state. It just reinforces my opinion that efforts to counterbalance the role of colonial archives and collections in Europeans’ understanding of Africa must be readdressed through the collecting and presenting “It is clear that the Europeans saw us as savages and were trying to prove that we aren’t real human beings,” said Cloud Chatanda, an illustrator who worked on the project. “Mangi Meli’s father, Mangi Rindi sent his best soldiers to meet the Kaiser in Berlin and gave his two best soldiers ivory, minerals and leather to present to the Kaiser and in return asked for a few weapons. The Kaiser sent the soldiers back with a music box and a sewing machine.”

Currently, Germany holds over 5,000 skulls of its former colonial subjects, including 200 from Tanzania. Among the skulls, six were as being from Moshi, dating back to the time of Mangi Meli’s death. Some of them have the inscription Dschagga/Wadschagga.

Mangi Meli Remains is a collaborative project between Flinn Works (Germany), BSS Projects (Tanzania/UK), Old Moshi Cultural Tourism, ArtEver (Tanzania) supported by the Ethnological Museum Berlin and the Humboldt University Berlin. It was funded by the Goethe-Institut Tanzania, the Berlin Senate Department of Culture and Between Bridges (non-profit exhibition space organised by Wolfgang Tillmans).

by Ben Taylor

Tanzanian gender rights activist, Rebeca Gyumi, has been awarded the prestigious UN Human Rights Prize.

Miss Gyumi is the 31-year-old Founder & Executive Director at Msichana Initiative, a civil society organization which aims to empower girls through education and addresses challenges which limit girls’ right to education. She has worked for over eight years with an organization working on youth, as a TV personality and youth advocate. Ms. Gyumi challenged the constitutionality of section 13 and 17 of The Law of Marriage Act of 1971 that allowed girls to marry at the age of 14 and 15 where there is parental consent or court’s sanction. She won the case before the High Court of Tanzania in 2016.

“I was pretty much shocked. So shocked and caught unaware that I was even considered for such a prestigious prize,” she said.

Rebeca had previous won the UNICEF Global Goal Award in 2016, and was named 2016 Woman of the Year by New Africa Magazine.

The Prize, established by the General Assembly in 1966 (A/RES/21/2217), was awarded for the first time in 1968 on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, on what is now known as Human Rights Day, 10 December.

This is the tenth award of the prize, coinciding this year with the 70th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Previous winners have included Eleanor Roosevelt, Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela, Jimmy Carter, Denis Mukwege, Malala Yusafzai, Amnesty International and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).

Gyumi first saw the injustice around her as a 13-year-old, when some of her schoolmates dropped out of school because of pregnancy and were married off.

A few years later, while studying law at University, she learned about the Law of Marriage Act of 1971 and saw the potential in trying to mount a legal challenge against it. “It bothered me that the age for boys to be married was 18 but for girls it was 14,” she said.

In 2016, with just a couple of years’ experience as a lawyer, Gyumi and her colleagues started work on a legal case to petition against the Marriage Act, compiling reports to prove that child marriage for girls was an serious issue nationwide and why it needed to be stopped.

They won their case; the High Court ruled that sections 13 and 17 of the Marriage Act were unconstitutional and that the age for girls to legally marry should be raised to 18.

“I was so happy that day for the fact that a girl child had won. I was overwhelmed with joy,” she says. “I felt duty bound to fight for the girls I had interacted with. They didn’t have enough information to know how to challenge what was happening to them.”

Though her success was celebrated by many around the country, not everyone was happy. She was attacked for promoting a “Western culture”, and the government launched an appeal against the ruling in 2017, arguing that child marriage can actually protect girls who get pregnant out of wedlock.

The case is currently in Tanzania’s high court with a verdict due soon.

“For me I feel like we are at the moment where our country really needs to defend girls’ rights,” said Rebeca. “This appeal does not send a good message of our country’s intention to protect girls generally. It will look really bad on the government if they win. There is no victory in winning a case that allows girls to get married younger. It’s not a victory a country can be proud of.”

Winning the 2018 Human Rights Prize puts Gyumi on the international stage alongside other activists such as Malala Yousafzai, Denis Mukwege and Nelson Mandela, and it’s not something she takes lightly.

“It’s not just a personal honour but my country’s honour, putting our country on the map. It’s a proud moment for me and for the girls I stood up for and for the ongoing global progress that is happening around girls’ and women’s rights.”

Asked by CNN what her message is to other young girls out there, her answer was simple: “I encourage you today to be brave and stand up for your truth.”