Post 1: Tanzania, a profile

Gabi Akrap
Aug 31, 2018 · 4 min read
Serengeti

Home to the Serengeti Desert and Mount Kilimanjaro, Tanzania lies in East Africa just south of Kenya.

With a population of 59 million, Tanzania has three main religions: Christian, Muslim, and Indigenous beliefs — which the Maasai Tribe practices.

The two main languages of Tanzania are Swahili and English.

Tanzania gained its independence over Britain in 1961.

In comparison to other African countries, a lot of which have experienced great strife, Tanzania would be considered fairly stable with a Fragile State Index score of 79.4. The FSI score assesses a countries vulnerability to collapse or conflict, this score puts Tanzania in the “warning” category and the U.S. , with a score of 37.7 in the “more stable” category.

In 2018, the U.S. and Tanzania had the same score in the “Factionalized Elites” category, which measures a countries power struggles, political competitions and transitions. Along with this, in 2011 Tanzania had a Gini Coefficient, which measures inequality levels, of 37.8 and the U.S. had a score of 40.4 putting them fairly close to one another.

President of Tanzania — John Magufuli

With an extremely low median age of 17.4 (the U.S. is 37.8) Tanzania has high youth unemployment, adding to some of its instability as a country. The current President, John Magufuli, made it one of his goals to tackle this problem. He also campaigned on boosting the economy, fighting corruption, and providing free primary and secondary education.

So far, President Magufuli has kept two of these promises. Standard Chartered Group, a British bank, has just approved a $1.46 billion loan to Tanzania to begin the second phase of the Morogoro-Dodoma section of the Standard Gauge Railway. This electric bullet train will increase tourism, which will in turn lead to more economic gains. Along with bringing in more tourists, the construction phase will employ approximately 30,000 people directly and an estimated 60,000 people after.

Increasing tourism also means increasing risk to wildlife. Currently, Tanzania has seen massive devastation to its elephant population due to poachers.

In 2015 the Tanzanian government announced that they had lost over 60% of their elephant population in the last five years due to ivory hunters.

Even Tanzanian’s themselves have poached these elephants for cash because of their financial struggles. But, if President Magufuli keeps his promises of boosting the economy then maybe in turn the elephant poaching will decrease.

Despite President Magufuli’s efforts to help the economy, it seems he has forgotten to help his own people. The President faces harsh criticism over his new cyber laws which censors any content the government finds causes “public disorder” or “a threat to national security”.

These cyber laws come after the 2015 publication laws which also granted the government the right to shut down any publication that caused a threat to public safety. President Magufuli banned four newspapers in the time span of three months, for content.

Banning these newspapers meant that hundreds of people would lose their jobs, the opposite of what he promised to do.

Now, bloggers, social media influencers, and online platforms will have to pay $930 to keep their sites running. But, if any content is seen as inappropriate, in the eyes of the government, it will be taken down and the publisher could face heavy fines or even jail time.

This new order is clearly a violation of human rights and freedom of speech. With its citizens in uproar, a peaceful protest was planned for April 26, 2018 in the streets of Dodoma.

Before the protests, the Tanzanian government greatly increased police presence and the police commissioner threatened to beat and send dogs on any protesters.

The streets of Dodoma were empty that April 26th.

Sub-Saharan Africa/Mizzou

Globalization Class

Gabi Akrap

Written by

Sub-Saharan Africa/Mizzou

Globalization Class

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