Need for Govt to Focus

Need for Govt to focus on one thing at time

In an interview with one of our weekly sister papers published in Kiswahili, Rai, the Governor of the Bank of Tanzania, BoT, Daudi Balali was quoted as saying the best way for Tanzania to get out of its present economic problems was for the Government to concentrate on one thing at a time instead of trying to solve all problems at the same time. Staff Writer, ATTILIO TAGALILE looks at the relevancy of the BoT’s chief in relation to the present Government’s pledge to create a million jobs for Tanzanians. Read on.

Although Balali did not go into details, what he actually meant was that every financial year, during budget session, efforts should be made by the Government to spent most of its financial resources in solving one problem.

He said if such a problem was say, the country’s infrastructure, then the Government could focus on that by setting aside more funds for dealing with the problem. The Governor said once such a choice was made and implemented to the letter, the Government would not need to dwell on the same problem again at later stage or years.

Balali’s argument makes a lot of sense, especially for developing countries such as Tanzania that have very little financial resources.

Indeed, trying to spread such meagre financial and other resources all over, trying to solve each and every problem would not take this country far.

If one looks at the performance of the past three successive governments, one is likely to appreciate Balali’s argument.

Take the first phase government of Mwalimu Julius Nyerere as a case in point.

The Father of the Nation was somewhat focused, despite his failure in extricating the nation from abject poverty.

For instance Mwalimu concentrated on one and only one thing, riding the nation of ignorance.

In order to succeed in that area, he nationalised some important religious owned schools mostly by Catholic and Lutheran churches so that children from other denominations who did not own schools could go and study in such schools.

Of course, the foregoing two denominations were not happy. But Mwalimu’s objective was to build one strong nation.

He did not want to have a nation that would have one or two denominations that had highly educated people and others with lowly or completely illiterate people.

Because his Government had few secondary schools, and he could not build as many schools as possible, for lack of money, he did what he did.

In a way, Mwalimu’s act was very important in that it avoided what is presently going on in Ivory Coast between the Muslim north and the Christian south, the former claiming, and some extent rightly, that they had been marginalised.

Therefore whatever peace politicians and government leaders in the last two governments and the present one have been talking about in Tanzania had more to do with Mwalimu’s vision than anything else.

Because he realised that the majority of his people were living in abject poverty, he knew that the best way of getting them out of poverty was through education.

But since the majority of Tanzanians were poor and therefore had no money to pay for their children’s education,
Mwalimu quickly introduced free education from primary school to university level.

In fact this explains the main reason why it is possible today to see highly educated people from all corners and nooks in the country.

Such a development was made possible because Mwalimu was focused. Knowing that his government had no money, he decided to do one thing at a time, and for him peace and tranquillity was a priority.

Therefore Mwalimu realised that the only way of ridding the nation of ignorance and building a cohesive nation was through education. And like Balali’s argument, Mwalimu succeeded because he chose one thing at a time!

And those who missed free education; they were afforded the opportunity to study later through the establishment of what came to be known as Adult Education programme.

Students were asked to use their vocation in the villages teaching their parents and other adults who did not know how to read and write.

After the first ten years, Tanzania had wiped out ignorance by 75 per cent. What was more; Tanzania was the only country in Africa to achieve such commendable goal!

Mwalimu succeeded in building a strong, peaceful nation because he was focused on nation building through education. But that was not all. He later decided to introduce Kiswahili as the national language, hence cementing national unity.

Other areas he focused on in order to build tranquillity in the country were the establishment of the National Service.

Under the foregoing programme, illiterates, semi literate, high school leavers, graduates and professionals mingled together as they were taken through military drills and other training.

Coupled with the Government’s decision to ensure that those who passed class seven were sent to secondary schools away from their home, Mwalimu finally succeeded to put in place what we have today, an island of peace.

The big question and challenge facing our nation today is: Shall we be able to maintain our present peace and tranquillity?

What is however, unfortunate is that the last two governments were not as focused as Mwalimu and the result is for all to see! Most of the problems we currently face have more to do with lack of focus than anything else!

As noted by Balali, our African governments, and in particular, the present Government ought to focus on one or two things, to choose what it thinks is a priority and deal with it.

It ought to decide what it wants to do, fight corruption or build the economy and if our focus is in our economy what part of the economy?

When President Jakaya Kikwete was campaigning for the presidency of the United Republic of Tanzania last year, he pledged to create one million jobs for Tanzania during his term in office.

The President repeated his goal soon after being sworn in. But he has not yet elaborated on how he is going to create one million plus jobs for a variety of reasons that include lack of time to focus on what he wants.

One of the reasons why he has not yet started dealing with the pledge is that immediately he was sworn in, he had to deal with armed robberies and other vices which had sprung up.

Yet the President’s pledge, the provision of one million jobs, is not a pipe dream. It can be fulfilled if he wants to and is closely assisted by capable lieutenants.

In his first speech to the Parliament early this year, one of the things he said was that Tanzania’s major resource was not minerals, but rather land.

What the President meant was that the country’s salvation lay not on minerals which would be finished in no time and leave the nation with holes, but land that could be used in developing modern agriculture and livestock keeping.

Indeed, if small countries like Botswana have managed to turn around their economies through livestock development and just one mineral, diamonds, why not Tanzania?

It was his conviction on the importance of land as the country’s saviour from abject poverty that probably led him into creating three separate ministries of water, and agriculture and that of energy and minerals.

It is not however, known having done what he did, creating the foregoing ministries, what the President hopes to do.

The second interesting move by the President was his decision to form what has come to be known as the Ministry of Infrastructure Development, combining everything from rail to roads.

Again like the first three ministries, it is not known what the present Government intends to achieve through the Ministry of Infrastructure Development.

However, one thing Tanzania is endowed with, under the Ministry of Energy and Minerals, is that it has massive deposits of iron ore at Liganga in Iringa region, a mineral that could hold the key not only to Tanzania’s economic success, but also to President Kikwete’s dream to create a million jobs for Tanzanians.

Ends