{UAH} Tanzania Vision 2025 fast becoming realistic

Tanzania Vision 2025 fast becoming realistic

                  

FATMA ABDU

01 May 2016

 

OVER the past decades , Tanzania has experienced a clear stable economic growth rate of 7 per cent. The growth rate that was driven an increase in domestic and foreign investments in the manufacturing and service sectors.

The 2012 National Population Census found that 54 per cent of Tanzanians population is under the age of 20, which means that over the next fifteen to twenty years, the country will have the largest youth population that will enter the economic productive years.

An economist from University of Dar es Salaam, Dr Joel Lincoln said that the nation will have rapid growth if it will be able to invest in the youth populations. "With the right investments in employment, education and family planning, this can enable a rapid acceleration of economic growth," he said.

He said that the nation today will continue having an increase of one million newborns, which are actively into contributing to the economy.

He argues that through the upcoming labour force there is a need for the country to have good governance that will manage to create jobs and also good education by changing the curriculum which will enable the group to have the education that gives a way for self-employment.

"It's true the curriculum we have from primary level to University does not create a person who think of employing oneself, but thinking of being employed by the government which lead to many into being jobless… we have to change and focus on practical than theories like vocational training centres," he noted.

He said, investing in youth populations will increase revenues through paying of taxes when they work and do businesses and even plan the city.

According to the World Bank survey in 2014, it shows that the country's per capita income has increased to USD 525 from USD 308 between 2001 and 2010, while the GDP increased from USD 10 billion to USD 22.9 billion during the same period.

However, the nation continues to accumulate other economic opportunities that if well exploited can enhance economic growth further, said the economist.

Those opportunities include discovery of massive deposits of natural gas and other minerals, the mobile phone boom and increasing foreign investments due to growing regional integration and partnership with the East African countries. Dr Lincoln said the emerging economic opportunities provide hope that the country's development aspirations articulated in Vision 2025 can actually be achieved by 2025 or a few decades later.

The vision seeks to transform Tanzania from a least developed country characterised by low productivity agricultural economy to a semiindustrialised middle income country with a modernised economy and high quality human capital. Recently, the government of Tanzania adopted Big Results Now (BRN) initiative to stimulate action towards the realisation of the development ideals set out in the Vision 2025.

The BRN is copied from the development approach followed by Malaysia, one of the Asian Tigers that achieved phenomenal socioeconomic transformation since 1970, partly due to the demographic dividend. He said that after independence Tanzania was at 319 of GDP per capita while Malaysia had 299; but after 50 years Malaysia has grown to 8,754 while Tanzania is at 514.

"Since the 1970s, 25-33 per cent of the economic growth in these 'tiger economies' has been attributed to a changing age structure of the population, shifting from a high proportion of dependent children to a high proportion of working young adults; a shift facilitated by universal access to family planning," he stated.

On the other hand, the External Relations and Strategy Lead at Marie Stopes Tanzania, Mr Leo Bryant said, the Demographic Dividend is the economic benefit which is arising from a significant increase in the ratio of working- aged adults relative to young dependants.

He also said that when birth rates decline significantly, the age structure shifts to have more working-aged adults, opening a window of opportunity for accelerated economic growth through increased productivity, greater household savings and lower costs for basic social services for children.

However, Member of Parliament (MP) of Kigamboni Constituency, Dr Faustine Ndungulile, said that to invest in women is creating large opportunity for them in decision making, going to school, acquiring of good health services including family planning knowledge.

He said that women are the big manufacturers through their engagement in small businesses and they are family cares too, when they have power to decide upon how many children they want to bear they can add value to the nation economy by keeping on working without tired and manage to take care of a small number of children.

"These women will have their careers, jobs and businesses that will manage them to take care of their body, able of family planning access and able to reduce maternal mortality," he said. He said that more than 24 women and 144 newborns die each day in the country due to labour complications and lack of quality care.

And also only 27 per cent have access to contraceptives, the number which is still low to an expected by the end of this year to be 60 per cent.

Following the high population that the country has build up over decades the working age population will be very big and therefore the nation will have to use extraordinary strategies to speed up the economic growth and generate enough quality jobs for its youthful population and also prevent political instability that may arise from unusually high unemployment rates.

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"When a man is stung by a bee, he doesn't set off to destroy all beehives"

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