Tanzania’s long-awaited ambitious plan to harness its natural gas and reduce its dependence on expensive imported fuel (which takes 60% of the foreign currency earnings each year) and hydropower (which provides 70% of the electricity) has received the go-ahead. The World Bank is providing a US$ 200 million loan for the project which will be undertaken jointly by the government and two Canadian firms in a new firm called Songas. The project will exploit an estimated 32,77 billion cubic metres of natural gas on the island of Songosongo, near Kilwa. The gas will be ferried to the mainland through a pipeline and a 100-megawatt electric power station will be built. It is hoped that some of the gas can be exported to Kenya.

Songosongo’s gas deposit was discovered 20 years ago but has remained unexploited because of lack of funds, In the last six years Tanzania’s electricity demand has been growing at 12% a year and is now estimated to amount to 800 megawatts, Between 1992 and 1993 there were serious power shortages because the prolonged drought had reduced water levels at the big Mtera Dam 400 kilometres southwest of Dar es Salaam. (An item on Tanzania’s progress in harnessing hydropower is to be found in the ‘Reviews’ section in this issue – Ed)

MRAMBA COMMISSION
Proposals to reduce the size of the Government from the
present 20 ministries to 15 ministries would save the government TShs 10,788,793,660 per year according to the report of the Mramba Presidential Commission set up to look into ways of reducing government expenditure. The Mramba Commission also said that ‘the continued economic crisis and the poor state of government finances are the result of the failure by parliament to ensure better performance by the government’ – Business Times.

STREET RENAMED 1N SPITE OF OBJECTION
The Dar es Salaam City Council has gone ahead with renaming Pugu Road as Julius K Nyerere Road and has erected a signpost there in spite of having received a letter from Mwalimu Nyerere asking it not to do so. The Mayor of the city was quoted in the ‘Family Mirror’ as saying that he had no right to rescind the Council’s decision.

WANTED – JUDGES FOR THE HIGH COURT
Upset by news that the government had disqualified a judge in a sensitive case because he was a human rights activist, the Dar es Salaam Express’s satirist ‘Squint Eye’ (July 28) drew up a job description for the post of judge in Tanzania:

Qualifications: At least 10 years experience in defending the government against its own laws and the constitution; a tendency to administer harsh sentences for any infringement against the state would be an advantage;

Duties: To preside over all cases against the state and produce verdicts which.. ..convince the ignorant populace that the interests of justice have been served; (verdicts should be issued) only after ensuring that the case has lasted so long that all public interest has died….

Remuneration: An attractive salary, a luxury villa belonging to a member of government, 24 hour security and protection against discontented litigants …. an attractive bonus for any judgement in favour of the state…

RED LOCUST THREAT
Tabora, Singida, Kigoma and Rukwa are under threat from red locusts, the Deputy Minister of Agriculture has stated. With the help of a donation of $193,000 from FAO the government has ordered chemicals, aviation fuel and spare parts for a sprayer plane which had been grounded previously for lack of insurance and the need for repairs – Daily News.

WOMEN BEATEN TO DEATH
Twelve women had been beaten to death by their husbands between 1991 and 1993 the Home Affairs Minister Augustine Mrema said at a conference on the Position of Women in Multiparty Democracy at the University of Dar es Salaam recently. There would be no democracy until women were accorded respect and fair treatment he said. He went on to state that 5,260 women had been beaten and harassed since 1991 with the heaviest incidence in Mbeya region. In 1993 1,954 women had been raped, the highest rate being in Dar es Salaam – Daily News.

TROOPS PRAISED
The Chairman of the Interim Government of Liberia, Mr David Kpormakpor, has appealed to Tanzania not to withdraw its soldiers from the peacekeeping mission in the country as they are doing a good job. The, same views were expressed by NPFL leader Charles Taylor who said that the Tanzanian troops were displaying ‘the best performance and were maintaining their neutrality’.
Visiting Tanzanian Defence Minister Abdulrahman Kinana commended the troops for the positive image they were building in Liberia – Daily News.

ELEPHANTS ON THE RAMPAGE
More than 700 elephants from Kenya entered Rombo District in Kilimanjaro Region and destroyed hundreds of acres of cash and food crops during July. The elephants, in groups of from 20 to 50 entered Rombo at night and walked back in the early hours leaving behind an orgy of crop destruction. On June 24th 17 elephants had been shot dead by Game Wardens in a four-hour operation. The District Commissioner has appealed to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to take the matter up with their counterparts in Kenya – Daily News.

ENVIRONMENT BILL
The Government is expected to introduce shortly a new Bill to Parliament – The Environment Protection Bill 1994. It will probably have 180 sections according to Robert Rweyemamu writing in the Business Times (June 10). It is expected to cover industrial pollution, conservation of endangered species, hazardous waste, genetically modified organisms and the setting up of an Environment Protection Court. A section of the Bill deals with definitions. ‘Litter’ is defined as ‘rubbish, refuse, junk, filth, garbage, scrap or other articles or material abandoned or unwanted by the owner or possessor thereof’.

CROPPING CROCODILES
Plans are under way to reduce the population of crocodiles in Tanzania by some 12,000 within three years the Minister of Tourism, Natural Resources and Environment Mr Juma Omar has announced. But approval would first have to be obtained from the crocodile specialist group (WCU) within the international organisation concerned with wildlife conservation – CITES. If permission could be obtained it was hoped to harvest some 5,000 crocodiles in 1995 – Daily News.

TWIN-OTTERS
The Air Tanzania Corporation (ATC) has sold its three Twin- Otter planes and does not intend to buy any others because, according to Deputy Minister for Works, Transport and Communications Hemed Kombo, they are expensive to operate. From 1989 to 1993 the ATC had operated a fleet of nine planes but the number had dwindled for technical and operational reasons – Daily News.

Research suggests that lions in the Ngorongoro Crater spend 20 hours out of every 24 asleep. Anyone intending to watch lions for months rather than minutes should, therefore, arm themselves with a substantial library and the address of a good psychiatrist. For a short time my sanity was saved by a bee.

My attention was first drawn to the insect during the filming of an inexpert hunt by a pride of eight lions. Just as they were about to ambush some zebra and the kill seemed certain, a stallion caught sight of one of the lurking cats. The zebra stampeded and the lions charged. Faced with a confusing array of high-speed stripes, not one of the eight lions snagged so much as a whisker.

All this time I was being intermittently bothered by an extremely annoying bee buzzing in front of my face at the most inopportune moments. My attention became focused when I saw it carry a tiny piece of rolled-up leaf on to a bolt-hole on my camera mount. I watched it unwrap this leaf and glue it to the wall of the tube. Leaf-cutting bees live in burrows and holes of a certain diameter, not in hives.

I moved my Land Rover several hundred yards and, to my surprise, not five minutes later, I saw a bee carrying another rolled up piece of leaf to the same hole. Aha I thought, they’re opportunists, and this new bee thinks it has been saved some work – what a pity these efforts will also be wasted.

I returned to the camp for the night and, as soon as my head touched the pillow, it was five o’clock in the morning and time to get up. My lions had killed in the night. I pulled up near the carcase of the wildebeest and prepared for a long wait. As I levelled the tripod, a bee flew into the bolt-hole with a piece of leaf. Now this was getting ridiculous. It was impossible, surely, that this was the same insect.

Over the course of several drives across the crater floor, the lining of the cell was completed, and the bee – for now it was evident that it really was one insect – started collecting pollen. Somehow, it was able to keep up with the vehicle and continue its work despite all the trying problems I was giving it. But the mystery remained. What happened at night? That evening I watched carefully. At 5.30 pm the bee returned to my camera and went to bed. Clearly, it had suffered the bone-shaking drive, the engine vibration and each freezing night on the crater rim to remain with its nursery. At this point the bee achieved a notoriety out of all proportion to its size and became something of a project mascot.

The next day, every move of filming position became fraught with anxiety. Had the bee made it? At one stage, Gil Domb, the producer, came up alongside me. Would two identical Land Rovers parked side by side, cause confusion? No problem for this bee. But then I had to move off to take up a position 200 yards away. Five minutes later, Gil called me on the radio. The bee was frantically searching his Land Rover. Could I come immediately and pick it up. I did, and there was great relief all round when it returned to the right vehicle.
At five 0’clock that May evening, the cell was neatly plugged and the bee flew off for the last time. It was a sad parting but also something of a relief. The whole thing was becoming far too much of a responsibility.

But, you may ask, what happened to its brood? The brood travelled more than 600 miles to various parts of the Serengeti and elsewhere. It was sealed in a camera case while I was on holiday. Then, one September morning, when I was back filming in the crater again, a movement caught my eye. With great astonishment and delight, I watched as a bee emerged. By incredible coincidence, it was just a few yards from its place of birth.
Alastair MacEwen

(This article appeared first in ‘BBC Wildlife’ – Ed)

‘Congratulations to Mr R A Mengi and the IPP Group’ said a prominent full-page advertisement in the ‘Daily News’ on June 11th ‘on this auspicious occasion of the opening of ITV (Independent Television Limited)’. But the celebrations were short lived. For, at the same time as this ‘professional’ TV station opened, another one, CTN (Coastal Television Network), described in the Daily News as a ‘more makeshift outfit’, also commenced operations. And the World Cup was about to commence.

AND THEN TURMOIL
In no time the two stations were at the High Court suing each other and Radio Tanzania for infringing their rights to televise the cup matches. Then things became very much more serious. They ignored advice in an editorial in the ‘Express’ which had applauded the two stations for their ‘courage and commitment to an enterprise which could hardly show meaningful profits for the next five years’. The Express suggested that they should cooperate in their mutual interest.

Viewers were astonished to hear next that 14 persons including the Director of a third licensed TV station, Dar es Salaam Television, and the principal competitor of ITV, Mr A1 Munir Karim, Director of CTN, had been arrested for threatening to kill IPP Chairman Reginald Mengi and blow up his ITV television station. The defendants were granted bail and the case was postponed to September 9th to give the police more time to collect evidence. The defendants were instructed not to go near any IPP company or Mr Mengi’s house. Some elements of the press in Dar es Salaam began to fan racial flames on this and other recent developments by pointing out that Mr Mengi was a successful indigenous Tanzanian (he recently strengthened his IPP company by joining the well-known international conglomerate Colgate-Palmolive) but the defendants in the case were Asian or ‘non-indigenous’.

PRESIDENT INTERVENES
An earlier event related to the Mengi saga was the action of the Principal Secretary in the Ministry of Home Affairs, Mr Silvano Adel, who had, on the night of June 23rd, consulted several senior police officials to facilitate the release of one of the suspects in the case, Mr Shabir Dewji, who was being held at the Central Police Station. Mr Dewji was released. It had apparently been alleged that Mr Dewji’s car had earlier chased Mr Mengi’s vehicle.

On July 12th it was announced that President Mwinyi had retired with immediate effect the Principal Secretary. A statement from the Minister of Home Affairs stated that the release (at 1.30am) of Mr Dewji had caused ripples among members of the public who felt that favouritism was being shown. This had tarnished the government’s image. Any public servant bringing the government’s reputation into question would not be tolerated.

PROGRAMME SCHEDULE
The ITV station is broadcasting from 5 pm to about 11 pm each day and its programmes include local music, a children’s programme, ‘Neighbours’, local and foreign drama/films and, while it was on, massive coverage of the World Cup – Daily News and other sources.

TAZARA MAKES 50% MORE PROFIT
The Tanzania Zambia Railway Authority (TAZARA) realised a revenue of Shs 22 billion in 1992/93 compared with Shs 13.2 billion in the previous year. Shs 20.7 billion came from goods and Shs 1.05 billion from passenger services. The net profit of Shs 7 billion compared with a figure of Shs 3.1 billion in 1991/92. Total freight loaded was 1,238,962 tons, an increase of 18% over the previous year.

KUWAIT AND SAUDI ARABIA HELP ROADS PROJECT
Tanzania is to get loans totalling US$34 million from the Kuwait Fund for Arab Economic Development and the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) Fund in support of the Dar es Salaam – Somanga road project. This is part of the multi-billion dollar Integrated Roads Programme (IRP). The project will include the repair and resurfacing of the Dar es salaam – Kibiti section linking it with the recently completed Kibiti- Ikwiriri section financed by the Saudi Fund for Development. The project also includes the construction of a new road traversing the Rufiji River flood plains and incorporates a 250 metre long reinforced concrete bridge across the river.

FACTS ON ILLITERACY
The Dar es Salaam ‘Express’ has been having a very close look at the 1988 census report – particularly at the figures indicating the rates of literacy. It has found that 34% of all male employees and 56% of all female employees were illiterate in the year 1988. The figures are also said to reveal that out of every 100 employees, assuming that 60% of them are men and 40% women, the men would be characterised educationally as follows: 20% would have received no education, 10% would have had four years of primary education, 26% eight years of primary education and only in four would have O’level certificates. The newspaper asks ‘why do we boast about our high rate of literacy?’

A SHINING EXAMPLE
‘A Shining Example’, ‘Remarkable’ ‘Exemplary Road Building’ – such are the comments being made by Dar es Salaam’s 2.3 million people as they witness the first phase of the city’s road rehabilitation programme. The Japanese company ‘Konoike’ is the recipient of the praise – it has now completed the reconstruction of some 21 kms of city centre roads – Daily News.

TROOPS IN LIBERIA
Tanzania has sent 800 troops to Liberia to join the OAU peacekeeping force. During a short ceremony held at Dar es Salaam airport, the Tanzania Peoples’ Defence Force Chief of Operations and Training, Brigadier Msuya, urged the group to portray a good image of Tanzania during the entire peacekeeping mission. The troops received a joyous welcome when they arrived at Monrovia’s Springs Payne airport on a plane of Air Gambia – Sunday News.

500 TONS OF COFFEE
The Tanzania Coffee Board has announced that between 1983/84 and 1992/93 Tanzania exported 503,223 metric tonnes of coffee worth US$1,077,350,000 or an average of US$107 million per annum. Seventy one per cent of sales were to EC countries followed by Finland (11.7%) Japan (9.3%) and the USA (1-2%).

JOAN WICKEN LEAVES
The Daily News revealed on its front page on April 28th that one of Mwalimu Nyerere’s closest and longest serving assistants and advisers, 69-year old Ndugu Joan Wicken, had left Tanzania for Britain after a 34-year stay. She said that she was leaving because of poor health. She added “I came to Tanzania as a socialist and I am leaving as a socialist”. She explained that she had always been paid a local salary and never paid as an expatriate. While in Britain she will continue to help Mwalimu in his duties as head of the South Centre which has offices in Geneva and Dar es Salaam. She denied that she intended to write a book.

NYAKYI RECALLED
Tanzania’s Ambassador to the UN in New York and former High Commissioner in London, Mr Anthony Nyakyi, has been recalled to Tanzania at short notice a few months before he was due to retire. A new ambassador, Mr Daudi Mwakawago, was formally appointed to the post apparently before Mr Nyakyi left.

BEAUTY CONTESTS
The White Sands Hotel and several beauty parlours in Dar es Salaam are hoping to revive beauty contests so that Tanzania can be represented in international beauty competitions. Tanzania was said to be the only country in the region that did not have such contests.

PROPOSAL ON FUTURE OF UNION
During an address to mark the 30th anniversary of the Union between Tanganyika and Zanzibar at the Amaan Stadium in Zanzibar on April 26th, President Mwinyi said that draft proposals aimed at ironing out shortcomings and administrative problems would soon be tabled before parliament for discussion. “It is true that the Union has vexatious issues but there is a need to sort them out to enable Tanzanians to move in line with the constitution regulations and procedures” he said – Daily News.

SIX DUTY FREE SHOPS CLOSED
The government has closed down six duty free shops, leaving only three still open, in a move to plug loop-holes of foreign exchange leakage. Customs commissioner Masoud Mvuma said that duty free shops were originally intended to enable foreigners to buy items which were not available locally but, that in the wake of trade liberalisation, this was not so necessary as virtually everything was now available in shops – Daily News.

Steps taken by the Dar es Salaam City Council to rename a number of streets in the capital have been widely criticised. New names include Nyerere Road (formerly Pugu Road) and Ali Hassan Mwinyi Road (formerly Bagamoyo Road). Adding to the criticism was the action of the Coca Cola Company in donating the new Mwinyi Road sign and attaching their trade mark to it. Senior government officials have complained about ‘prostituting’ the honour of the presidency.

Mwalimu Nyerere has reportedly asked the Mayor to rescind the decision because as long as he lived he wanted to live as an ordinary citizen and rejected all schemes designed to erect monuments or relics in his honour. He complained that he had not been consulted before the change was made – Family Mirror.

AND WHO IS GOING TO ANSWER THESE QUESTIONS?

Franklin Mziray in the Daily News has been raising a few questions:
– who from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs will go to Brazzaville and Rabat to explain why we have removed these countries’ names from our streets?
– who will be making a courtesy call on former CCM Vice- Chairman Rashidi Kawawa to explain why such a narrow unworthy street as Kigoma Road has been named after him?
– who is going to alter all the hundreds of house plot names that will have to be changed?
– how many of us use the earlier list of new names? Sokoine Drive instead of City Drive? Samora Machel for Independence Avenue?

The first television service in mainland Tanzania began operating at the beginning of February. It is called ‘Coastal Television Network (CTN)’ and will cover an area including Dar es Salaam, Morogoro and Zanzibar. CTN is the only license holder of the American CNN and will be able to air local events free of charge. A second TV station owned by IPP has been given a licence by the Broadcasting Commission and is expected to start transmission shortly.

Tanzania is active in using new technology as a result of the activities of the University of Dar es Salaam’s INSTITUTE OF PRODUCTION INNOVATION (IPI).

Tanzania’s sugar production from four large factories is not enough to satisfy local demand (current production is about a quarter of demand) and the factories need a large supply of sugar cane from near at hand to operate efficiently. But sugar-cane can be grown all over the country. IPI has therefore designed, manufactured and put into operation a couple of dozen small-scale crystalline sugar producing plants which are simple, easy to operate, affordable and can handle up to 15 tonnes of sugar-cane per day and produce up to about a ton of CRYSTALLINE SUGAR of good quality. This highly successful innovation won a national award (Tanzania Award for Scientific and Technological Achievement – TASTA) in 1991 and an international award (EEC-ACP Award for the Best innovation in 1989.

Sparked by the acute shortage of EDIBLE OIL in Tanzania during the late 1970’s, IPI developed and has successfully disseminated over a hundred sets of equipment for processing the oil on village level. A few of these have even penetrated the market in some other countries in the region. The original work was aimed at developing manually operated equipment for extracting edible oil from sunflower seeds to satisfy the needs of a typical Tanzanian village. This resulted in a set of equipment comprising a sunflower seed decorticator, winnower, roller/crusher, scorcher, manual scissor-jack type press and a boiling stand. The equipment is capable of producing 40kg of sunflower oil from 210kg, of sunflower seed during one shift. Subsequently, due to enquiries for similar equipment to process other oil seed crops like coconut, palm oil, groundnuts and simsim, development work was extended to include additional processing equipment like palm kernel nut cracker, palm kernel nut shredder, a palm fruit digester, palm oil clarification tank, copra chopper and copra shredder. Equipment designs in earlier years emphasized manual operation, but requests for power drivers equipment led to adaptations to run with electric motors and diesel engines, particularly for sunflower decorticators and winnowers and palm kernel nut crackers.

Another highly successful innovation, from which over fifty projects/groups have directly benefited so far, EQUIPMENT FOR PROCESSING ANIMAL FEED was initiated in 1986 when chicken feed was very scarce especially in Dar es Salaam. The equipment consists of a hammer type mill and a central augur type vertical mixer. The mill has a capacity of 1.5 tonnes per hour and the mixer is available in two sizes capable of mixing 0.6 and 1.2 tonnes of feed per batch in half an hour.

Practically everyone in Tanzania needs to be able to mill maize and IPI’S locally manufactured hullers and hammer mills have proved very popular indeed. Hundreds of units have so far been produced and are operational all over the country. They are superior in their performance, strength, reliability and also versatility.

Other technologies which IPI has worked on and is presently in the process of developing include ethanol distillation equipment, use of ethanol as a fuel for engines, water pumps including hydraulic rams, wind water pumping, solar energy, including water heating and refrigeration, and domestic coal stoves, to mention a few. Also included in the present focus of IPI developments are processes and equipment for small-scale mining and mineral processing, in particular gold and equipment related to the construction industry such as vibrating block making machines.
Cuthbert Kimambo

Three years ago I was engaged as a social anthropologist in field research into the Lungu ethnic group, a people who by an accident of history are divided between southwest Tanzania’s Rukwa Region and the Northern Province of Zambia. I had last visited Sumbawanga, the regional capital, in 1977 while working on the history and culture of another local people, the Fipa. Sumbawanga was then not much more than a large village with a population of about 3,000. Great was my astonishment to find in 1990 a thriving urban centre of some 60,000 inhabitants.

How to account for this extraordinary twentyfold increase in the size of this remote settlement in one of the poorest parts of Tanzania? One notable clue, it seemed to me, lay in the vast open market which had mushroomed in the area and which in the 60’s and 70’s had been fallow land dotted with the characteristic compost-mound plots of the Fipa. Most of this new market was taken up with stalls selling clothing of all kinds. I learned from local officials that most of these goods originated as shipments from charitable organisations in the United states and Germany and were intended for free distribution among the poor. These goods were said to have mysteriously found their way into the private sector. Whatever the truth of the matter, it was evident that business was flourishing.

During my eight months of field research among Lungu on both sides of the border I was to acquire further insights into the dynamics of the so called ‘second’ or ‘ informal’ economy (now said to represent 30% of economic activity in Tanzania) and the transformation of the once sleepy settlement of Sumbawanga into the populous ‘boom town’ of southwest Tanzania. Near the border with Zambia I observed Tanzanian Lungu women heading across the frontier with Zambia with loads of beans and groundnuts. These were destined for sale to trading partners, usually relatives living in Zambia. That transaction concluded, these women then walked another 15 miles to Mbala, the local administrative and commercial centre. Here they bought sugar, which they carried back into Tanzania and sold.

But these were just the minor operators in the thriving cross-border trade I which is driven by price differentials between the two neighbouring countries. A few years ago, before the nationally imposed campaign for the growing of hybrid maize, this part of Tanzania produced a substantial surplus of finger millet (Eleusine corocana), much of which was traded across the Zambian border. In 1990, near the major Lake Tanganyika port of Mpulungu in Zambia, I was able to observe the daily departure from Ngwena (Crocodile) Beach, known locally as ‘Smugglers’ Beach’, of boatloads of small traders carrying such items as sugar, petrol and kerosine to Tanzania. Much of this material certainly ended up in Sumbawanga market.

While in Zambia I was able to interview one of the bigger operators. This enterprising young woman told me that she ran a weekly ‘service’ of contraband sugar (export of this scarce commodity is banned under Zambian law). Her practice was to buy it in bulk in Kasama and deliver it by boat to a kinswoman near the Tanzanian lakeside port of Kasanga, whence it was taken by lorry to Sumbawanga. other sources told of lorryloads of illicit goods driven across the border along bush tracks which avoided the customs and immigration posts at Zombe and Katete.

I encountered the informal economy again while travelling to Dar es Salaam on the Tazara railway. One of our fellow travellers was a personable young Tanzanian who told us he was shepherding a cargo of chicks acquired in Zambia. His intention was to sell them in Dar, where they were much in demand. From the proceeds he would buy a load of shirts, which he would take to sell in Lusaka. He told me he had been operating this profitable ‘shuttle service’, incidentally travelling first-class all the while, for many months.
Roy Willis

References:
Maliyamkono T Land Bagachwa M S D. The Informal Economy in Tanzania. James Currey 1990.

Pottier J. Migrants No More: Settlement and Survival in Mambwe Villages, Zambia. Indiana University Press 1988.