Public-private sectors to fight poverty

from the Daily News Tanzania

This article details a conference happening in Tanzania. - kale

The Chief Secretary of the Revolutionary Council of Zanzibar, Mr Ramadhan Mwinyi Muombwa, has said the public and private sectors have to join hands in fighting poverty and in addressing other economic challenges facing Tanzania.

Mr Muombwa made the appeal in Zanzibar while closing a six-day seminar on leadership attended by senior officials from the Union and the Revolutionary Government of Zanzibar as well as representatives from the private sector.

The seminar is the first in a two-year series of seminars to be delivered by the Enhancing Public Service Leadership in the Globalised Era (EPSL) programme targeting leaders from the government and the private sector.

"It is clear to me as it should be clear to you that it is only through increased collaboration and partnership between the private and public sectors that we are going to succeed in our Endeavour to free our people from the trap of abject poverty," the chief secretary told the participants.

Underscoring the two government's readiness to support and strengthen ties with the private sector, Mr Muombwa said Tanzania's competitiveness would not be forged by the government or the private sector in isolation but by the leaders of the two sectors working together to find "effective ways of collaborating and sharing ideas on how to lead our people."

Assuring the government of a reciprocal collaboration by the private sector, the Co-chairman of the CEO Scholarship Fund Trust, Mr Ali Mufuruki, said the private sector viewed the EPSL programme as a welcome initiative to the common goal of establishing better understanding and relations between the two sectors.

The EPSL Programme is a three-year initiative that is jointly funded by the Government of Tanzania, development partners and the CEO Roundtable - a forum consisting of 40 members, mainly chief executive officers from leading private sector companies operating in Tanzania.

The programme aims at providing an innovative training curriculum for selected members of the civil service and the private sector within Tanzania, with the goal of developing flexible leaders who are well prepared to succeed in the changing global business environment.

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Premier of Tanzania invites scholars to work on MDGs attainment

from the Daily News of Tanzania

The premier of Tanzania has invited academics to help poor countries to meet the Millennium Development Goals. - Kale

by GODFREY OBONYO

Premier Mizengo Pinda yesterday urged academicians and researchers to recommend the best macroeconomic policies that could assist least developed countries (LDCs) attain Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by 2015.

“Poor policies are detrimental to financial development, economic growth and poverty reduction in the LDCs”, he said. The premier made the comments when addressing participants to a two-day international conference organised by the Institute of Finance Management (IFM) in Dar es Salaam to share development policy experiences.

He said that there were some countries in Sub-Saharan Africa and Asia that were likely not to attain the MDGs, due to abject poverty and diseases such as HIV/AIDS, Malaria and Tuberculosis. The conference brought together participants from seven countries in Africa, Asia and Europe.

Other issues threatening the attainment of MDGs are poor education and educational facilities, lack of health facilities, lack of clean and safe water, malnutrition, high infant mortality rate and corruption. ‘‘Research findings should promise availability of financial development, stable capital markets, continuous and stable economic growth to help policy makers come up with reliable and predictable macroeconomic policies to achieve the goals,’’ he said

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Participatory management of water resources has a crucial role to play

from IPP Media

This story details the challenges of water and sanitation programs in Tanzania. - Kale

By Perege Gumbo

As 50 percent of Tanzania`s population remains below poverty line living on less than 1 US dollar per day, poverty becomes the number one concern of government.

However, with over 80 percent of the poor being in rural areas depending on agriculture for survival, how could good water development and management unlock the majority of people from abject poverty? Staff writer Perege Gumbo reports:

THE Tanzania`s Reduction Strategy Paper (PSRP) and the development Vision 2025 testify inalienability of water from the country`s development.

The two documents show clearly that for Tanzania to achieve its development aspirations-eradicate poverty, attain water and food security, sustain biodiversity and maintain ecosystem, then water was critically important.

Water and Tanzania economy:

Several studies have shown that the importance of water to Tanzania`s economy and the role it could play in government`s efforts to fighting poverty was enormous.

The Poverty and Human Development Report of 2007 for instance, underlined that the performance of Tanzania`s economy had largely been dependent on availability of water/rainfall.

This is because the nation\'s key economic sectors such as agricultural sector relied directly on water resources shortage of which has had tremendous negative impact on Tanzania`s household incomes.

The importance of agriculture to Tanzania`s immediate and long-term economic and social development could be three folded.

Firstly, the truth that widespread improvement in the farm income was a precondition to reducing rural poverty.

Secondly, the strategies for addressing food security must involve deliberate measures to improve agricultural and livestock production and farm incomes, all of which required availability of water resources.

Thirdly, since agriculture remained a single major contributor to the national Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and indeed key to Tanzania\'s overall economic development now and in the near future, good water development and management are inevitable.

It is such good development and management of water resources that experts say could enhance the estimated 75 percent of 39 million Tanzania`s population depending on small-scale farming improved production for increased household incomes.

In line with the government\'s high priority of poverty reduction and in recognition of the importance of agriculture in poverty alleviation efforts, the Participatory Irrigation Development Programme (PIDP) was adopted in 2006.

The programme emphasized on attaining improved overall water availability and agricultural productivity which would have great multiplier effect on poverty.

This underlined the fact that improvement of majority rural population`s farm incomes was a must, if Tanzania wanted to reduce rural poverty.

This could be easily attained through good development and management of water resources.
But what real constituted good water development and management and why was participation a preferred process?

The reasons are varied but the process has tended to generate ownership and allow for dealing with varying behaviours, cultures and values.

It highlights practical concerns at early stages by providing multiple reality checks before implementation and perhaps most importantly, it allows for local people to create their own assumptions and institutions, using processes of social learning that uncover aspects of their interactions.

Integrated water development and management broadened the appreciation of water resource availability from the absolute to specific characteristics that support the functioning of ecosystems and society integrity of reverie ecosystems and preserve their ability to provide services valuable to humans.

On the other hand, sustainable management of water would be guaranteed as the participatory approach was adopted because such a process dictated a broad-based involvement of water users, environmentalists, farmers, planner and policy makers, ministries and departments at all levels.

Unlike in the past, when water resource development projects were planned, developed and managed sectorally without involving other user stakeholders, the current water policy 2002 advocates and indeed makes broad-based water project participation mandatory.

The objective for such policy directive was to avoid conflicts among different water users which previously led to frequent failure for realization of most projects\' objectives.

As water sources touched a number of ministries, government departments and other stakeholders, integrated water development and management approach recently been opted for.

Under the new approach, three major areas-comprehensiveness; subsidiarity; and economic prioritization were accorded due importance in all decisions related to water.

Comprehensiveness of water development and management entailed holistic basins approach for integrating multi-sector and multi-objective planning and management that aimed at minimizing effect of externalities to ensure water resource sustainability and protection.

On the other hand, subsidiarity enhanced decentralization of decision-making and devolve the process to the lowest practicable level.

This draws in stakeholders to participate in planning, design and implementation of the management actions as well as decision-making.

Economically, all decision-makings in the public and private sectors and civil society over use of water has to among other things, reflect the scarcity value of water, water pricing, cost sharing and other incentives for promoting its rational uses.

Once wards, districts, regions and planners on one hand, and national water user projects on the other hand were implemented using the participatory approach in alignment with other national growth strategies, it would allow the water sector to maximally contribute to households and national economic growth and consequently to the poverty reduction.

Participatory benefits:

The importance of participatory-based approach in developing and management of water resources has been well documented.

It actually facilitates equitable sharing of water resource benefits which accommodates interests of various parties to the resources.

On the other hand, it allows equitable involvement of men and women in selection, planning, decision-making and implementation of water resource.

Above all, inclusive development and management of water has been important because it provided for sustainable water projects through down-top model of decision-making.

Through participatory water development and management, a comprehensive framework promoting optimal, sustainable and equitable development and use of water resources for present and future generations could be guaranteed.

``Participatory water management seeks to address cross-sectoral interests in water, watershed management and balanced integrated approach to water resources planning, development and management,`` says part of the National Water Policy 2002.

As the Tanzania Development Vision 2025 aspires to among other things, attain food self-sufficiency and security as well as universal access to safe water, the participatory approach to water development and management would not only be a stepping stone for realizing the goals, but also for meeting the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

The MDGs requires Tanzania to halve the number of people, who have no sustainable access to safe drinking water by 2010, but experts say slow reforms in the water sector could affect the attainment of government`s water sector targets as well as the MGDs.

Despite Tanzania being on track towards meeting the MDGs for water supply, it still faces challenges since only 54 and 73 percent of rural and urban populations respectively have access to safe water supply.

The targets are to extend water and sanitation services to 65 percent of rural and 90 percent of urban populations by 2010.

Participatory water development and management that foster gender engagement, environment protection and the use of local and affordable technologies could hasten realization of local and international set water and sanitation goals.

Policy objectives versus business principles:

Broad-based water development and management being advocated for by the government face challenges that need solutions before succeeding.

One of the challenges is that as the National Water Policy 2002 encouraged private sector participation in water-related service provision, privately-owned firms defined by profit motives only needed to be cautiously engaged to allow water resources contribute significantly to government\'s poverty reduction efforts.

This calls for close government monitoring of private sector`s water resource development and management to ensure prices of water to common men users remained as affordable as possible against private operators` usual known motives of profit maximization.

For this to happen, the government needs to develop and undertake frequent review as well as improvement on water and sanitation policy.

There should also be a well facilitated, co-coordinated, monitored and regulated provision of water and sanitation services to the Tanzanian public with a gender perspective to relieve the 51 percent of Tanzanian women suffering from water related problems.

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EPAs must now address poverty, urges minister

from the Citizen, Tanzania

The GDP of Africa increased by 5 percent last year, while the continents world trade declines. A politician from Tanzania speaks out on the importance on trade aggrements with it's neighbors. - Kale

By Polycarp Machira

The government has said negotiations between the Africa, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) zone and the European Union should unequivocally address poverty reduction and wealth creation as key to envisaged economic partnership agreements (EPAs).

Finance and Economic Affairs minister Mustapha Mkulo (pictured) made this affirmation while opening a conference on accelerating regional integration in Eastern and Southern Africa and the Indian Ocean Region (ESA-IO) in Dar es Salaam yesterday.

He said deliberations on integration should also recognize peculiarities and differences among African countries as well as Caribbean and Pacific states, noting that they are by no means a homogenous group.

''Optimal integration outcomes can be realized if the process of integration is properly thought through and owned by countries which are integrating,'' he said.

African regional integration and deepening of the African-Caribbean and Pacific integration process must be underscored by sound mutually beneficial trade cooperation arrangements among the countries, he further stated.

Since 1975 the ACP countries, under the Lome Convention series, have in theory enjoyed the European Union market access, duty free and quota free.

In practice this privilege of market access to the EU has delivered little in economic results, he pointed out.

The minister, standing in for President Kikwete at the function, said over the years, the market share of products from the ACP countries to the EU has been declining.

ACP has lost market share to non-ACP countries in the process, he stated.

Studies have revealed that the cost of production in Sub-Saharan Africa is relatively higher compared to Asia or Latin America, thus ACP countries do not produce goods meeting standards of the EU market, the minister noted.

Mr Mkulo said a key issue that should always be considered is drawing up rules for desirable integration and economic partnership agreements.

These should be trade rules that will result in improving the quality of life in the world, in particular the reduction of widespread poverty, he emphasised.

European trade commissioner Luis Michel told the gathering that the EU council of ministers was convinced that the main objective of negotiation with ACP regions is to reach a durable economic partnership.


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Fighting poverty through family planning

from IPP Media Tanzania

By Deodatus Mfugale

Mseko sat in front of his humbo house, a hut really, his eight children around him. The children were aged between two and 12 and none of them had started school, even the eldest one, a girl.

At 12 years old, there was no hope that the girl would see the inside of a classroom. It was very likely that Mseko would marry her off to get a few shillings in dowry in order to keep things going.

His wife was not at home. She had gone to her in-laws in another village to deliver their ninth child and Mseko remained hopeful that all would go well.

There was no dispensary in the village and the nearest was 50 kilometres away.

It was late morning and the family had only eaten some boiled cassava for breakfast which would also pass for lunch.

With a family of ten which would soon be bigger by one more person, Mseko cannot provide his children with all their needs, including food, a good house and education.

This would have been possible if he had a smaller family because he and his wife would have more time to work and produce more food for the family.

They could also have time to engage in other activities that would earn them an income and so be able to bring up healthy children.

Yet the problem might not be with Mseko and his wife.

How much do they know about family planning methods?

Where would they get such information?
As Tanzania joins the rest of the world to mark the World Population Day today, we all have to do a bit of soul searching to see how we can help the poor to access family planning information and services so that they live a dignified life.

Unfortunately, and this is the case in many developing countries, where only urban dwellers have is access to these services.

But as this year`s theme says, Family Planning: It`s a right, let`s make it real. Indeed family planning is a human right and making it real means enabling everyone to access the services whether they are rich or poor, whether they live in a village of a city.

Realising this right means making everyone aware of the importance of family planning in relation to poverty reduction, among other things.

When couples decide how many children they would like to have and at what interval, they have in mind sharing the resources they have among the children so that each of them will get the best care, including nutrition and education.

The also have in mind raising the quality of life by fighting poverty. This is possible because mothers can also join the labour force and earn an income for the family instead of only depending on the man`s earnings.

Where both parents are peasants, family planning enables the woman to join the man in farming activities so that they can produce more food for the family and sell the surplus to meet other needs. What we see here is the fact that for poor families, a woman`s health is of utmost economic importance.

``Women make up more than half of the agricultural force in developing countries. They grow 80 per cent of staple crops in Africa and in South East Asia; 90 per cent of rice growers are women,`` says a recent publication of UNFPA.

It stresses the need for families to have fewer, healthier children so as to be able to reduce the economic burden and allow parents to invest more in each child`s care and at the same time fight poverty.

But again, this can only be achieved if women are educated and become aware of the importance of family planning programmes.

Families with fewer children can spend more on the health and education of each child given the resources available.

The importance of family planning does not end up at the family level but has impacts on the national economy at large.

Countries with large populations and a high population growth rate often find it difficult to provide matching social services while those with small populations and a slow population growth rate helps to cut the cost of social services.

This is because few children attend school; more people are healthy and so don`t have to seek health services very often.

There is also less demand for water, food, housing and transportation which allows governments provide better social services.

The important thing here is that with a small population the government is better placed to invest its resources in the provision of quality social services.

Talk about resources, huge populations have also a negative impact on a country`s natural resources.

``Africa is a land of increasing population and rapidly changing land use patterns.Sustaining a reasonably high economic growth rate to match the human population growth rate coupled with ensuring the environmental and natural resources integrity is one of the key challenges being addressed by NEPAD,`` says former President of the African Ministerial Conference on the Environment Andre Okombi Salissa.

What we see here is that lack of implemention of family planning programmes is an economic burden not only to families but also to governments as a fast growing population increases pressure on the natural wealth, natural resources like water, land, and the environment.

The population problem is a continental issue. The starting point should be empowering women through access to reproductive health,information and services.

Healthy women can effectively help to reduce poverty and there is enough evidence to show that investing in women`s empowerment can produce a multiplier effect.

Experts say that women in the age bracket of 15 and 49 years contribute enormously to their families, communities and countries as in most families they are either primary or contributory bread winners.

Thus investing in women through education, reproductive health and economic rights can trigger progress on poverty reduction and sustainable development.

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Holy Cross students see Third World poverty up close

from the Worcester Telegram and Gazette

By Bronislaus B. Kush

About two years ago, Nicholas Campolettano, a student at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester who was studying religion and sociology, began developing an interest in the plight of some of the indigenous people of Africa.

He researched issues affecting Africans and carefully monitored news developments from the world’s second-largest and second-most populous continent.

Last year, Mr. Campolettano, a resident of Hicksville, N.Y., on Long Island, even worked with U.S. Rep. James P. McGovern, D-Worcester, and state Sen. Edward M. Augustus Jr., D-Worcester, to organize a program on the genocide in Darfur.

“I did a lot of studying, but you can only read so much,” said Mr. Campolettano, who will be a senior next fall. “I wanted to expand my understanding, and the only way I could do that was to get some firsthand experience.”

He got that chance.

Mr. Campolettano and 13 other Holy Cross students recently returned from Tanzania, an East African nation on the Indian Ocean. The trip was arranged through the school’s faith-based Arrupe International Immersion Program. A second Holy Cross group is visiting the country now.

“The trip certainly made an impression on me and it provided me with a special perspective that I didn’t have before,” Mr. Campolettano said.

The program is named after Pedro Arrupe, a Jesuit missionary who aided those injured in the 1945 atomic blast at Hiroshima and who later became superior general of the Jesuit order — or the Society of Jesus, as it is formally known.

Holy Cross spokeswoman Kristine Maloney said the program has been offered at the school for 22 years and hundreds of students have participated in trips to Mexico, Jamaica and Appalachia, as well as to Africa.

She said the program’s aim is to make participants more aware of the privileges they have and encourage them to extend a helping hand to the less fortunate.

Students get a real feel for the country they’re visiting because they have direct contact with inhabitants in natural social settings.

Ms. Maloney said some students are so affected by the trips that they decide to study a discipline that trains them for career fields geared toward aiding the needy.

“A lot of the participating students are transformed by the experience,” Ms. Maloney said.

Rebekah C. Linga of Douglas, a junior, said she was struck by the poverty most Tanzanians live in.

“I knew we were going to a Third World country but I didn’t expect that things would be that bad,” said Ms. Linga, an English major. “We realized we were in another world as soon as we got off the plane.”

Slums dominate the outskirts of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania’s largest city and its commercial center, she said.

“The homes were basically made up of sticks in the mud with roofs of hay,” said Ms. Linga, daughter of Eileen and Boleslaw Linga. “They were about the size of a Holy Cross dorm room.”

Many street people tried to sell visitors jewelry, trinkets and other items, she said. One woman even offered to pose for a picture in order to get a Tanzanian shilling or two.

Many people had no shoes.

“There was a young boy who walked around in pink flip-flops,” she said. “Boys don’t like pink, even in Tanzania, so you knew he had nothing else to wear.”

Ms. Linga said things aren’t much better in the countryside, where there is no electricity in many places and where some residents must walk a mile or two for water.

Holy Cross students were humbled by the trip and wanted to reach out to the Tanzanians they were visiting, she said. Some, she said, wanted to donate some of their clothing or toiletries, which are considered luxury items in Tanzania.

On some nights, the students gathered to reflect on what they had seen or experienced with Marty Kelly, the assistant Holy Cross chaplain, who accompanied the group.

“Personally, I wanted to do whatever I could to help these people,” said Ms. Linga, who hopes one day to become a magazine writer or editor. “I wanted to get my hands dirty and to do some kind of work.”

Despite the obstacles they face, Tanzanians work hard to improve their lives, said Ms. Linga.

She and Mr. Campolettano said Tanzanians realize the importance of education and noted that many students in rural areas walk miles to go to school.

“The people have a great spirit,” said Ms. Linga, who brought home some jewelry, a small tribal mask, and some animal figurines from her trip.

Mr. Campolettano, who also took part in an immersion group trip to Mexico, said there’s a mounting effort to fight AIDS in Tanzania. Previously, many Tanzanians refused to deal with the issue because of the stigma associated with the deadly disease, he said.

Mr. Campolettano said he particularly remembered a small clinic staffed by three doctors — one from Wisconsin — and some nurses who provided AIDS prevention counseling to the 50 or so patients treated daily at the clinic.

He also noted that women are working to empower themselves within the framework of a patriarchal Tanzanian society. For example, he said, cooperatives have been organized, some by the Sisters of Notre Dame, in which women pool their financial resources for the betterment of all.

One such group is saving money for a cow, said Ms. Linga.

She added that more and more Tanzanians seem to think tourism might bolster the fortunes of their country.

Tanzania’s economy today is mostly based on agriculture: About 80 percent of the work force is involved in some aspect of farming. But Tanzania, with a population of about 40 million, is home to a dozen beautiful national parks, such as the Serengeti, and some see tourism as a means to expand the national economy.

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Banker says Tanzania could benefit from ongoing global food crisis

from IPP Media

By Perege Gumbo, recently from Johannesburg

A leading economist has said Tanzania is one of the few African states which command great potential to turning the current global food crisis into gainful opportunity.

That is because the country is endowed with huge arable land and has since independence enjoyed unparalleled peace and social-cultural stability, unlike so many other countries in the region.

Addressing participants to the second Business Journalism Forum, the Standard Bank Group Economist Yvonne Mhango said that with many African nations facing internal political instabilities, Tanzania could benefit from the current global food crisis.

Drawing contrasts, she said that recent Kenya�s post election violence and conflicts in Chad, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Sudan, Zimbabwe and Northern Uganda were factors which do not augur well with enhancement of farm productivity.

Tanzania has a surface area of 94.3 million hectares, of which 19.1 million hectares represents arable land, but only 5.1 million hectares are cultivated annually. The rest of the arable land is either reserved or used for pasture.

Under proper policies, incentives and technological encouragement, this land could produce enough crops to feed itself and export the surplus to global markets.

These remarks are coming in the wake of indicators showing that food prices have been rising globally, and use of crops for bio-fuels is partly blamed for the problems.

In a report titled Africa Economic Outlook, launched recently in Maputo, the African Development Bank (ADB) raised concerns that besides the rising prices of crude oil in the last three months, prices of some major food crops have nearly doubled.

According to the report, rice prices increased from USD373 a tonne to USD760 while that of maize rose from USD171 a tonne to USD220 in the last three months.

Yvonne further said that since there was no signs that the prices of food would go down as a result of continued hiking of fuel prices which has forced many major food producers to opt for bio-fuel, embarking on commercial irrigation would turn the current food crisis into economic opportunity.

She said that as food shortages continued, many African economies and the lives of common people were likely to be pushed further into abject poverty.

``This is a blow for the African nations as they struggle to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) of reducing number of people who do not attend schools as well as poverty as these won�t be attained in the presence of severe hunger`` she stressed.

Apart from bio-fuels opted for by the major world crop producers to mitigate the climbing fuel prices, she said other factors that are contributing to food crisis in Africa as being changing dietary cultures, increase of fertiliser prices, high energy costs, and prolonged droughts in some parts of Africa.

Despite erratic weather, bad policies and recent ban of crop exports by countries such as China and Zambia were equally harmful.

One of the striking reasons for global food crisis she said was the Chinese intensive use of crops to feed its animals particularly pork which is the main food dependent of the majority Chinese.

In particular, she said the ban on crop exports was counter productive over the longer runs since it would tend to discourage local farmers to increase production.

She proposed that food crisis could best be dealt with by African states including Tanzania through embarking on commercial irrigation schemes, improvement in the agricultural production and the use of better seeds and fertiliser.

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More People Live in Poverty - Report.

from All Africa

Byline: Pius Rugonzibwa

A majority Tanzanians has sunk deeper into poverty in the past three years despite the country's general economic growth, a recent survey shows.

The survey carried over the last year by the Research and Analysis Working Group under the National Strategy for Growth and Reduction of Poverty (Mkukuta) found out that 52 per cent of the respondents, mostly in rural areas felt their economic situation has become worse since 2005.

According to the report of the survey, which was announced in Dar es Salaam recently by the Government, the situation could become even worse amid the rising global food and fuel prices.

The report, which is entitled the 'Poverty and Human Development Report of 2007', has reinforced the widely believed conception that very few Tanzanians were enjoying the fruits of economic growth.

Only about 23 per cent of the people interviewed, largely living in urban areas, said their life style had improved, while 25 per cent said nothing much had changed.

But in all income groups, including the least poor, all perceived the current economic situation as worse off than it was three years ago. Sixty-seven per cent cited the rising cost of food among the basic needs as a major problem.

The survey assessed several variables including employment and other sources of livelihood, availability and costs of agricultural and industrial inputs, enterprise and the availability and costs of food and other basic items.

The findings show that 78 per cent of urban dwellers afforded three meals a day and could at least eat meat or fish three times a week. On the contrary, 55 per cent of rural dwellers afforded three meals a day and meat or fish twice a week on stressed budgets. In small towns 64 per cent afforded three meals a day.

Other problems cited in the report are the lack of reliable electricity, which was increasingly becoming a major obstacle to production in especially urban areas.

About 23 per cent of all respondents said they were using electricity as a source of lighting. Of this figure Dar es Salaam led with 59 per cent, followed by other urban areas with 43 per cent and rural areas only 11 per cent.

The rising costs of gas and electricity have as a result saw the increased use of charcoal, with urban dwellers currently consuming 83 per cent of the total charcoal produced in the country.

In agriculture, the report says the lack of adequate inputs was still a major problem. About 87 per cent of farmers interviewed said they were not using chemical fertilisers, 72 per cent were not using chemical pesticides, herbicides and insecticides, while 77 per cent could not afford improved seeds.

The report says farmers were seriously affected by the high costs and unavailability of fertilisers and other inputs, and also by the unavailability of extension services.

Pastoralists have been facing major hurdles in the form of droughts, diseases, long distance to markets, low market prices for their animals, lack of green grazing areas and inaccessibility to market information.

About 78 per cent of the pastoralists also mentioned the high costs and often lack of veterinary medicines as main problems. Seventy-six per cent of the pastoralists said the government was doing nothing to help them.

However, about 48 per cent of livestock keepers said there was an improvement in extension service provision, although most of it was said by the respondents to be coming mainly from the private sector.

Another major issue highlighted in the report is the bad state of rural roads, which has been mentioned as a setback to economic development and poverty reduction efforts. In urban areas more people acknowledged some improvements.

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Tanzania's Missing Girls Rarely Raise a Murmur

from Womens E News

By Zoe Alsop

Poverty and tradition help fuel a potent business in human trafficking in East Africa, where a girl can sell for $20. Most kidnapped children are not as lucky as Saffi, who returned after her mother bought TV ads. Many disappear without much notice.

For five months last year Kim Kitchen, a Canadian expert on sexual violence and community development, lived in a crowded shantytown on the outskirts of the Tanzanian capital of Dar es Salaam while she set up a women's safety program. She began to notice that nightfall was an anxious time for mothers.

"One of the startling realities for me was as the sun started to set I observed the women would start calling in their daughters," said Kitchen. "As the sun set more and more, and daughters hadn't come, the urgency in their calls grew. It was just a matter of fact that every girl has to be in their home after dark."

Across East Africa--once a corridor for merchants trading slaves from the continent's interior for fine cloth, frankincense and spices from the Middle East--conditions are in place for a boom market in the traffic of human beings. Poverty and instability in the region mean many are desperate enough to trade themselves or their children for a ticket out. Tanzania is no exception.

At the same time, some traditional practices--such as witchcraft and child marriage--are implicated in the disappearances of many young girls.

Kitchen is a trainer with the San Francisco-based organization Girls Speak Out. Its organizers in the United States, Australia, Kenya and Tanzania arrange workshops for girls and women to talk about what it means to be female in their communities. They are meant to give girls a chance to discuss their bodies and traditions in the light of their legal rights.

Kitchen collaborated with local groups based out of the slums who are fed up with watching helplessly as their children vanish.

"They are just groundbreaking kind of people," said Kitchen, referring to their willingness to challenge some time-honored practices that can sometimes be deadly, particularly for women and children. "The majority would say, 'Why would you do that? This is going against tradition.'"
Vital Work

"If you went to a witch maybe to be wealthy, you take a small baby, a boy or a girl, to offer," said Rutta Thobias, a project coordinator for Dar es Salaam's Mass Development Association, known as MaDeA, an antipoverty program focused on women and children.

This kind of witchcraft is suspected in the case of a 4-year-old girl, Salome Yohana. Security guards found her severed head in the bags of a boy on his way to visit his aunt at the hospital in late April. The girl's body was found at a public latrine across town, where someone had apparently tried to dispose of it. Her parents had not reported her missing to police or the press.

"The issue of killing children, especially girls, needs to be taken more seriously," said Thobias, who just days earlier had been drawn into the kidnapping case of his neighbor's 5-year-old daughter, Saffi.

Saffi's story was unique and shows the impact work like that of Kitchen and Thobias can have in Tanzania.

Early on the morning of April 1, the little girl said goodbye to her mother and set out for kindergarten, just 600 meters along a dirt path through her neighborhood. Saffi's family didn't see her again until seven days later, when she turned up at a bus stop in another part of town, terrified and shivering with malaria. She said she'd been raped.
Extraordinary Return

For her mother and neighbors, the extraordinary thing was not that she'd disappeared but that she'd turned up again at all.

"On the first day we think maybe she was raped and killed," said Thobias. "On the second we think maybe she has been taken into trafficking."

A girl like Saffi is a liquid asset as far as kidnappers are concerned. They can sell her to families eager for cheap house servants, pimps, witch doctors and men seeking virginal brides. In 2003, a girl could be bought for as little as $20 in Dar es Salaam, according to the United Nations.

Children's parents are often complicit in the deal; sometimes they must sell one child to afford meals for younger siblings during especially difficult economic times such as when crops fail. But even when they aren't, they rarely go to the police or publicize the case, particularly when the child is a girl and rape may be involved, said Thobias. "Most of the people, after the same incidents happen to them, they believe more in magic power, that if you campaign the kidnappers may kill the child."
A Determined Mother

But Saffi's mother, who's employed by the Tanzanian military to train cadets, was different. She helped Kitchen meet women in Mbagala. She made as much noise as she could, including going to mosques around the city to ask that the muezzins include a description of Saffi in their calls to prayer, and then to local government offices to report her daughter missing. She spent what little savings she had on advertisements and then went to Thobias to ask for more. Within days, Saffi's face was in newspapers and on television screens.

The media attention made Saffi's kidnappers decide she was more trouble than she was worth. They put her on a bus. By chance a family friend spotted her, slumped at a busy bus stop miles from her home and called her mother.

The odds that the men who kidnapped Saffi will be found are very low. Because her mother did not report to the police on the night her daughter was found, they say she has no case number and they cannot investigate.

Zoe Alsop is a freelance writer based in Kenya.

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Maintaining the road to poverty?

IPP Media

By Staff writer Peter Msungu

Last year Mgovano Nyumbi of Mahenge harvested four bags of finger millet, promising good money. He could not get a market.

The produce decomposed, shattering Nyumbi`s dreams of becoming rich through his sweat and toil on the land! He is seriously contemplating whether he should continue with cultivation of the cash crop.

``Motor vehicles cannot reach my farm tucked 35 kilometres away from passable roads. The road to my place is impassable,`` Says Nyumbi.

His cry is echoed by Yuda Mangwada, a peasant farmer: ``I have my five-acre farm at a village, 16 kilometres away from Dabaga in Iringa District, from which point we usually transport our fruits from the farm.

``The only available transport is the usual bicycle and on paths, because the rough and bumpy road is now hardly passable.

We have tonnes and tonnes of harvested fruits which cannot be carried by simple bicycles.

``If our road could be rehabilitated tomorrow, Iringa Municipality will be self sufficient in all types of fruits.``

Mwangwada is rehabilitating the road with the help of his family and a handful of neighbours.

Juma Khalfani Mussa is a timber dealer from Tabora. He has great trouble in taking his products from as far as 20 kilometers to the nearest railway station where he transports them to Tabora for processing.

Vehicles cannot easily reach his area of activity because of poor roads.``At times the cut wood has stayed in the forest for more than two months without being transported to the marketing centres due to transport problems.

By the time transport is available, the wood has gone bad,`` complains Juma, adding: ``Government must know that if our communication network is not deliberately improved, there can be no meaningful development in our country.``

Many people hailing from the rural areas are in agreement that little attention is paid to feeder roads making them inaccessible for most part of the year, and consequently fuelling economic poverty to the masses despite their active engagement in production.

Says Desmond Komba, retired Veterinary officer: ``Many of our agricultural products come from the rural areas where roads are in such pathetic condition that vehicles are unable to take the products to buying centres.``

``Peasant farmers in many remote rural areas have had problems bringing their produce to urban centres due to poor road infrastructure,`` says Nyumbi who says people from his village have asked Mahenge authorities to rehabilitate the roads to allow access to urban markets.

Aloyce Chambaga, a retired Agriculture Instructor, who has settled in Makete District, Iringa Region told the Guardian on Sunday that many roads in the area are so poor that you one cannot afford to send a vehicle in to ferry out produce.

``You have to mobilize people so that they carry your harvests piece- meal to the nearest centre from where they can be taken to the nearest market centre,``Chambaga explains.

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Doctor finds higher calling when death knocks

from the San Francisco Chronicle

Meredith May, Chronicle Staff Writer

Dr. Frank Artress looked down at his fingers. His nail beds were turning blue. He was running out of oxygen near the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro.

A cardiac anesthesiologist, Artress knew the signs of high altitude pulmonary edema. He knew there was a 75 percent chance that he would perish on Africa's highest peak.

Artress led his wife to a rock, and they sat together above the clouds. Then it hit him. He wasn't afraid to die, he was ashamed. He had lived only for himself - practicing medicine in a Modesto hospital, traveling with his wife, purchasing luxury vacation homes and collecting art. He felt as if he had nothing to show for his 50 years. He felt as if his life had been a waste.

In that moment, Artress and his wife realized they were living for the wrong reasons. In that moment, everything changed.

Some people dream of giving up the trappings of success and starting life anew, with a purpose, with a social conscience. For Artress and his wife, the idea suddenly seemed real.

That day on Mount Kilimanjaro would lead the Modesto doctor and his wife to leave their comfortable life in California to become bush doctors, dedicated to easing the heartbreak of Africa.
The mistake

Their lives might never have changed if Artress had simply followed mountain guide Kapanya Kitaba's instructions and thawed out his drinking water.

Instead, on the fifth day of their six-day Kilimanjaro climb in 2002, Artress awoke early at Arrow Glacier Camp. His wife was still cocooned in her sleeping bag. The 22 African porters were just beginning to stir.

Artress had wanted to do something big for his 50th birthday. An amateur photographer, he had a new Nikon, and began photographing the sun rising over the snow at 16,000 feet.

He knew his drinking water was frozen but figured it would melt during the all-day hike up the steep rocky face to Crater Camp at 18,500 feet, where they would spend the night and acclimate before summiting the next morning.

The group trekked all day, but Artress' water didn't thaw. Embarrassed at his gaffe, he didn't tell anyone how thirsty he was.

After a stop for lunch, Artress began to lose his breath. His lungs were slowly filling with fluid. It felt as if someone was squeezing his throat. He turned to his wife.

"We are in a really, really bad place," he began. He explained what was going on, and that the only cure was to descend.

But that was out of the question, Kitaba said. The climb up Shira Route's Western Breach they had taken that day was too rocky and dangerous to descend, especially at night. To make matters worse, the temperature was falling, and that increased the chance of a rockslide.

The only option was to make the 840-foot climb to the top and go back down the other side. Husband and wife held each other and sobbed.

"I thought how stupid it would be to die without ever giving anything back to society," Artress said.

By midnight, Artress worried he wasn't going to make it. Shivering under a pile of blankets, he turned to his wife: "We've got to do something, or I'm going to be dead by morning."

Susan Gustafson rousted the camp, and they set off in the freezing darkness for the summit.

Kitaba and the porters took turns wrapping an arm around Artress and singing Swahili songs of encouragement in his ear. They sang about the mighty mountain and about resilience, and stopped with Artress every time he had to bend over and take deep breaths to get his heart rate below 200.

In case his heart gave out, Artress taught the crew how to give him a precordial thump - a closed-fist smack to the chest that simulates an emergency adrenaline shot.

After eight hours, they crested the summit. Kitaba sent a porter racing ahead to the Kilimanjaro National Park ranger station to ready a stretcher.

Artress made it down the other side to the ranger station at 14,700 feet, where he promptly passed out.

When he awoke, he was in his sleeping bag, strapped to a military cot with a motorcycle tire under it. Four porters were each holding a corner and running down the mountain, still singing Swahili prayer songs. These men who barely knew Artress had risked their own lives, climbing in the darkness, to save his. Artress was overwhelmed with gratitude.

Kitaba got Artress to a doctor in a clinic in nearby Arusha the next day. The doctor saw no heart damage.

On his way out, the doctor, a U.S.-trained Australian, planted a seed: "You know, Dr. Frank, we need doctors here in Africa way more than they need them in California."

Artress turned back.

"It's been a rough couple of days. Could I have a night to think about it?"
The decision

The next morning, Artress and Gustafson met the doctor for lunch. They had been up all night talking about how to live a life of purpose. What better way to thank the people who had saved Artress' life by returning to their medically deprived village so he could save theirs? The next morning, they were ready with an answer for the doctor.

"We're in. We'll come work in your hospital."

They knew their decision was the right one when they returned to their creekside ranch home in Modesto. The things they normally missed when they were away - the matching silver sports cars, the signed Mirós and Picassos, the full-throttle espresso machine and the swimming pool - no longer had any charm.

"It looked like we were at someone else's garage sale, looking at all their junk," Artress said.

That week, Artress quit his job at Doctors Medical Center in Modesto and Gustafson gave notice as an educational psychologist for the public schools. Then they sold everything - the Montana ranch, the condos in Colorado and Palm Springs, the $40,000 garden sculptures - and made plans to return to the foot of Kilimanjaro to administer medical care as a way of repaying the community that saved Artress' life.
A new life

Their new African home was a tiny apartment on one of the noisiest streets in Arusha - with a Masai market selling chickens, goats and cows, a boisterous nightclub, and a mosque with predawn calls to prayer. Their electricity was intermittent, their tap water brown and they had no radio or television. They learned to appreciate cold showers and goat meat.

And they were at peace.

"It was as if this Buddhist cloud has passed over us," Gustafson said.

But the job offer hashed out over lunch never materialized. The doctor who had promised them work in his clinic had returned to the United States.

Artress found work with another clinic in Arusha, where he ended up in what amounted to a crash course in tropical diseases.

On his first day, a patient with neck abscess the size of a baseball came in. The resident doctor handed Artress a scalpel.

"I am an anesthesiologist. I don't do this," Artress protested.

"You do now."

It was like being in a residency program all over again. Everything that walked in the door was foreign to him. The girl who fell in a fire and had her arm welded to her chest, like she was permanently saying the Pledge of Allegiance. Another patient had a foot overtaken by a fungal infection. Artress saw children with bugs in their ears, foot-long worms in their intestines and infected witch-doctor burns on their bodies.

Many of his patients walked for days to see him. They had been living with their pains for years, in some cases all their lives.

"They don't know what it feels like to feel good," Artress said.

Such is the state of medical care in northern Tanzania, where the patient-to-doctor ratio is as high as 60,000 to 1 in some of the more remote areas. Poverty, isolation and lack of dependable medical care mean most adults have never seen a doctor. Most don't live past 40, succumbing most often to malaria, tuberculosis and routine infections from drinking dirty water. A quarter of Tanzanian adults are HIV-positive, and the majority has no access to antiretroviral medicines that keep the virus from escalating to AIDS. Half of all Tanzanian children are malnourished.

With an 80 percent unemployment rate, and the other 20 percent earning the equivalent of $1 a day, many can't afford bus fare, let alone a doctor bill. The lucky ones who get into a clinic often walk out with painkillers but no diagnosis.

"You can save someone here with $1.50 worth of antibiotics - but the heartbreak of Africa is that people don't have access to that most basic care, so they are dying of completely preventable diseases," Artress said.

Unless Dr. Frank can save them.

He relies on a well-thumbed reference book, "Tropical Medicine and Emerging Infectious Diseases," and the Internet, which allows him to research and e-mail with experts in the United States about how to handle the bizarre cases - such as the man with a 5-inch horn protruding from his neck. About the shape and texture of a pumpkin stalk, it was some type of accelerated bone growth. After a few e-mails with former medical colleagues in Modesto, Frank had the patient come to his house and lie down on the dining room table, where he surgically removed it.

After two years at the clinic, Artress and Gustafson were ready to branch out on their own. They stocked their beat-up Land Rover with donated medicine and headed into the bush.
The bush

They began conducting outdoor clinics at orphanages and tribal villages, where they passed out antibiotics, vitamins and bandages. From the back of their truck, they gave malaria tests and sewed up cuts. In 2005, they bought a 20-foot Mitsubishi bus, with four-wheel drive, running water and oxygen. They added solar electricity.

In mid-November, Artress and Gustafson, their interpreter, a visiting doctor and several volunteers drove to a Masai village in Mdori to check on the villagers. They headed for an open plain, near a boma - a constellation of mud huts with weed roofs.

Artress and Gustafson spotted a lone acacia tree and parked in the shade. The bus doubles as the pharmacy and needs to stay cool so Gustafson can be inside to fill prescriptions.

A crowd started forming before they could finish brewing their coffee over a portable propane burner. First to arrive was a young boy, wearing a red shuka robe and carrying a spear, with swollen, watery eyes.

Then came the women, of all ages, in bright blue robes with elaborate beaded jewelry on their necks, wrists, ankles and ears, making a soft clinking noise in the breeze. Many carried babies, who drank milk from gourds decorated with leather and small white beads.

Almost 100 people gathered on the ground before Artress. It seemed as if everyone was sick. Children had distended bellies. A few had malaria. Women had strained necks from carrying buckets of water on their heads, and high fevers. Several were sent to Gustafson inside the bus to receive an antibiotic shot in the buttocks to treat sexually transmitted diseases. It's likely they caught diseases from their husbands, who frequent prostitutes while working in tanzanite mining towns for months at a time.

Many of the women had ulcers. Artress treats about 20 ulcers a day in Tanzania, which he said is the result of so much worrying about where the next meal is coming from.

"When I first got here, and so many patients had ulcers, I thought something must be wrong - that's an American disease," Artress said. "But as I came to learn the culture, it made sense. Every day is a fight to get water, a fight to stay warm at night, a fight to find food for your kids. That's got to be more stressful than worrying about getting a promotion."
Breaking ground

Artress and Gustafson's friends back home began to realize their trip was not a midlife crisis. It was a mission. They pooled their resources and helped form a charity so they could raise money to build a permanent hospital in Karatu. One friend began collecting castoff hospital supplies and shipping them to Tanzania. Williams and Paddon Architects in Roseville (Placer County) designed the hospital. A volunteer created a Web site. Artress' sister agreed to be accountant. FAME - the Foundation for African Medicine and Education - was born in 2004.

They raised enough to buy 18 acres on a gently rising slope with panoramic views of the terraced coffee plantations, lush jungles and purple Jacaranda trees ringing the Ngorongoro Crater, a national conservation area. The air is soft, and the sound of songbirds quiets only when the sun goes down.

First, they planted a perimeter of trees and hired a guard, an askari, to help shoo the elephants that come down from the jungle.

The property will include cabana huts for patients' family members and visiting medical volunteers. Artress and Gustafson will live in a small house. They will add a medical training program, so Tanzanians can learn how to administer Western medicine.

At the newly built dispensary, patients can come for checkups and surgeries, and construction has begun on the 40-room hospital.

Rotary clubs and the Medical Relief Foundation in Modesto are paying for a well to serve the hospital and neighboring village. It will be Karatu's first freshwater well.

When completed, the FAME hospital will be the first in Karatu, a city of 180,000.

"The medical need here is simply overwhelming," said Artress, leading The Chronicle on a tour of the construction site.

Karatu has three doctors, with varying degrees of training. They are all generalists who are more known for handing out painkillers than actually treating patients. Back in Modesto, about the same size as Karatu, Artress was one of 20 cardiac anesthesiologists at his hospital. Karatu has no medical specialists of any kind.
Keeping his promise

One of the first, and now a regular, stop on Artress' rounds is the village where his Kilimanjaro mountain guide, Kapanya Kitaba, lives.

"Dr. Franki! Dr. Franki!"

Children are running alongside his Land Rover, waving and banging on the side, as Artress pulls into Kapanya's village. Artress slows so as to not run them over. He waves back at them like a beauty queen on a float, turning slightly red but liking the attention.

Once Artess has parked in Kitaba's driveway, the kids know the car is theirs for the evening. More than a dozen pile in, and take imaginary trips to faraway places.

"For a mzungu - a white person - to come here and care so much is a really amazing thing," Kitaba said. "When he comes, people ask me how much it will cost them and they can't believe it when I tell them it's free."

Artress' arrival inspires a feast - chicken cooked over a charcoal fire, rice and cooked bananas.

Before dinner, Kitaba has a few patients waiting. First up is Abraham, a man in his 30s who looks 20 years older - gaunt, tired and listless. He has been suffering from an ulcer for three years. He has never seen a white person before and is a little reticent, but lets Artress touch him.

Artress pushes on his chest in various places, asking in Swahili where he feels the pain. Artress hits the right spot and the man sucks in air and closes his eyes. Artress pulls some pills from his black bag and prescribes them to Abraham. Kitaba runs into his house and returns with a digital camera.

"He thinks you are an angel who came with medicine," Kitaba explains. "He wants a picture to prove it was true, because nobody will believe it. He will put it on his wall and remember you forever."

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Non Government Organization Assists Women in Poverty War

from All Africa

The Citizen (Dar es Salaam)

By Felix Mwera Tarime

A women's non government organization (NGO) has assisted in the formation of about 100 women groups to carry out anti-poverty activities among the rural population in Tarime district, Mara region.

Some of the groups have already established small-scale economic activities in their respective areas.

This was revealed here by the executive chairperson of the association called Tukamilishane Womens Association (TWHA), Ms Leticia Ghati.

Addressing a press conference yesterday, she mentioned some of the activities started by the groups as tailoring, brick making, beekeeping, food processing and farming.

However, she said, they were in dire need of small-scale entrepreneurs training skills if they are to achieve the intended goal.

"We are also soon opening a shop for selling farm inputs, such as fertiliser, at Itiryo village in Nyanungu ward," she said.

She challenged other stakeholders, including the Tarime district council, to chip in and assist them with soft loans.

"The groups are determined to eradicate poverty and we ask the council to help them," she pointed out.

Registered in 1994 TWHA's objective is to contribute to the development of women economically and socially at the grass roots level, according Ms Ghati.

The NGO has been operating without donors so far, she said.

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Green relishes Tanzania mission

from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Former Green Bay congressman gets word out on America's good works

By MEG JONES

Dar es Salaam, Tanzania - Mark Green goes to work every day in a relatively new American embassy where a large stone sits under the shade of a tree. On the stone are the names of more than 200 people.

They were killed in twin suicide bomb attacks at the embassies here and in Kenya, Tanzania's neighbor to the north. And that's why the former congressman from Green Bay works in a new building as America's ambassador in this eastern African country.

Ten years ago this August, al-Qaida terrorists drove truck bombs into the embassies in carefully coordinated attacks. Kenya bore the brunt of the deaths. A water tanker truck prevented the attackers from getting close to Tanzania's embassy; 11 died, none American.

"We think about it all the time," Green, 47, said in an interview in his new office.

Green's service in Dar es Salaam follows an unsuccessful run for governor in 2006 and eight years representing northeast Wisconsin's 8th Congressional District in the U.S. House. The U.S. Senate approved Green's nomination - which received strong bipartisan support from Wisconsin lawmakers - in August.

When some visitors remark about the new facility, Green tells them, "Good people lost their lives. It's sometimes easy to forget that this place has terrorism."

A man captured in 2004 in Pakistan and held at Guantanamo Bay was charged late last month with war crimes in the Tanzanian attack. Ahmed Ghaliani is accused of buying and delivering explosives as well as scouting the embassy with the suicide bomber.

Though the new U.S. Embassy is heavily guarded, staffers undergo terrorist drills, and the ambassador receives weekly counterterrorism briefings, Green said the best way to combat violence is by encouraging stability in Tanzania and addressing "the conditions that lead to despair and that can too easily lead to extremism."

Chief among those conditions are poverty and an exploding rate of AIDS/HIV infection and deaths from malaria. In a country with a population of more than 39 million, 100,000 people are expected to die in Tanzania this year from AIDS, Green said.

American aid to Tanzania will total more than $600 million this year with more than half spent on AIDS relief. That's one of the reasons why President Bush spent three days of his six-day visit to Africa in February in Tanzania, the first visit to this country by a sitting U.S. president.

Bush met with AIDS patients and toured a factory, partially funded by U.S. money, that makes chemically treated bed nets that help prevent the spread of malaria. The president's visit, along with the news coverage it generated, boosted the efforts of the U.S. Embassy staff and U.S.-backed non-governmental organizations and showed other African nations of America's commitment to improving the lives of residents and combating AIDS and malaria.

"It was the chance for a couple of days for the cameras to be focused on this country," said Green, who took over as ambassador in September.

Green has seen first-hand the devastation of AIDS here.

Recalling a visit in November delivering food to AIDS widows, Green's father, Jeremy, a physician who grew up in South Africa, was visiting to celebrate Thanksgiving and tagged along on the excursion. One woman told Green and his father that she had lost her husband to AIDS and she and two of her four children were HIV-positive. She told them that, with the little money she had, she could buy medicine for her two sick children or send the two healthy children to school - but not do both.

Green frequently encounters such heart-wrenching stories. Currently 1.4 million Tanzanians are receiving HIV treatment.

"It's hard to appreciate it unless you see it," he said of the scale of AIDS in Africa and the loss of so many lives.
Success story

Despite the poverty and AIDS epidemic, Tanzania is actually one of the continent's success stories. Unlike Kenya and Zimbabwe, there have been no disputed elections. Since Tanganyika gained independence from Britain in 1961 - and three years later merged with Zanzibar to form Tanzania - the country has largely avoided the rampant corruption and ethnic fighting that have plagued other African nations.

When he's not managing a staff of 320, Green spends much of his time traveling throughout the beautiful country that earns much of its income from tourists flocking to visit Serengeti National Park and other game preserves.

On a map in his office, where his desk sports a coffee mug coaster in the shape of a cheesehead, 18 pink Post-it strips pinpoint the areas he has visited to meet with Peace Corps volunteers, attend ribbon-cutting ceremonies, give speeches, present textbooks, preside over the start-up of a weekly radio program devoted to women's health, and visit schools and medical facilities.

Soon after the interview, Green was traveling to northwestern Tanzania to check out refugee camps. One of the first things he did was to print small cards outlining America's initiatives in Tanzania with figures on how much is spent on specific programs to hand out to people.

"I try to put a personal face on the good works that everyone here is doing. That's how we win in the long run," Green said.

Moving from Wisconsin to the ambassador's residence has been quite a change for Green, his wife, Sue, and their three teenage children.

After serving four terms in Congress and losing the November 2006 gubernatorial election to Democrat Jim Doyle, the Green Bay Republican worked as a lawyer and inquired in Washington about a job in Africa. He and his wife had spent a year teaching in a western Kenya village in the late '80s, and Green visited Africa twice as a congressman serving on the House International Relations Committee.

Last spring, he was offered the position in Tanzania and despite opposition from two Democratic senators - Chris Dodd and John Kerry - he was approved after lobbying from Wisconsin's congressional delegation.

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Mobile clinics to reduce maternal and child deaths

from IPP Media

By Correspondent Christopher Magola

At least 578 out of every 100,000 expectant women die of pregnancy-related complications in Tanzania every year while the number of newborns dying is 144 per 1,000 live births.

According to the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare every year 8,100 mothers die due to child birth related cases and pregnancy complications and that a total of 157,000 children die due to preventable conditions.

To address the situation the Government has launched a National Road Map Strategic Plan to accelerate reduction of maternal, newborn and child deaths in Tanzania (2008-2015).

The Plan was officially launched by President Jakaya Kikwete during a recent visit to Tanzania by Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg.

The plan includes introduction of mobile clinics to help bring health services closer to the people noting that 53 per cent of all newborns in the country are delivered outside conventional hospitals, dispensaries, clinics and health centres.

The mobile clinics system was earlier announced by President Kikwete during this year\'s White Ribbon Day whose theme was ``Stop needless maternal, newborn and child deaths during and after birth. It is possible``.

Under the mobile clinics system, pregnant women and children would have to report to nearby health centres, where they would be picked up by an ambulance, an ordinary vehicle or a motorcycle and rushed straight to hospital.

These mobile clinics stand to help reduce maternal and newborn deaths, as most pregnant women will give birth under the close supervision of medical specialists.

Launching the plan, President Kikwete said in order to achieve the objective of the plan, the government was committed to ensure the health sector received adequate funds in the next budget, which he said could increase to 15 percent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) from the present 10.1 per cent.

During this year`s White Ribbon Day, marked on March 25, the National Coordinator of The White Ribbon Alliance for Safe Motherhood in Tanzania, WRATZ, Rose Mlay, called on the government to give the health sector a budget big enough to redress the awful situation of maternal and child deaths in the country, especially in rural areas.

The underlining causes of preventable maternal deaths are many, but there were three areas that stand out as critical problems.

These are lack of access to skilled attendance at birth and poor quality of essential obstetric care, poor referral mechanisms and lack of awareness of danger signs of obstetric emergence.

The government has made efforts to reduce maternal deaths and of newborns as spelt out in the country`s Poverty Reduction Strategy and a broader Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

As part of the efforts, Tanzania has adopted the national roadmap on reduction of maternal deaths and newborns from the grassroots to the national levels.

The plan aims at improving the quality of services in health facilities by upgrading the skills of service providers, provide essential equipment and supplies to health centres in Tanzania.

Minister for Health and Social Welfare Professor David Mwakyusa has said under the strategy, the government will improve family planning and clinic services, improve and expand services at referral hospitals, provide important equipment needed during delivery and increase the number of health sector graduates.

White Ribbon Alliance national co-ordinator Rose Mlay has explained that the acute shortage of specialists at most health centres in rural areas was causing havoc on the lives and health of mothers and newborns.

At the launch of The Tanzania Benjamin William Mkapa National HIV/AIDS Fellows Program in 2006, it was reported that human resources capacity has been identified as one of the most significant challenges in scaling up access to Anti-Retrovirals (ARVs) in Tanzania over the next five years.

Staffing levels at primary health care facilities in Tanzania are only 30 percent of requirement of qualified professionals.

``Total health staff requirement in regions and districts is 60,320 but only 39,206 are available, hence a shortfall of 21,114 health professionals`` reads part of a report issued by the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare recently.

According to the report, the health workforce crisis in Tanzania needed a robust intervention in training, retraining and recruiting health staff accompanied with a conducive working environment for all medical staff.

WRATZ says that one woman dies every hour in pregnancy-related complications and that only 46 percent of women deliver with a skilled birth attendant.

President Kikwete, however, has stressed that the government would continue to build dispensaries and health centres up to the ward level, while it was also working out a plan to address the shortage of medical personnel.

Statistics show that although 90 percent of pregnant women attend clinics, only 47 per cent give birth at health centres.

Therefore, efforts should be done to offer education the best way of child delivery among expectant girls and women right from a household to community levels.

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4 Regions Declare Anti-Poverty War

from All Africa

The Citizen (Dar es Salaam)

By Samuel Kamndaya

Arusha, Kilimanjaro, Manyara and Tanga regional commissioners are planning to fight poverty and ignorance in their regions.

They will also improve key sector to increase incomes of people.

They said in a statement obtained in Dar es Salaam that entrepreneurial and business education would be spread to householders to enable them to exploit their resources fully.

They made the remarks in Arusha at a weekend empowerment workshop.

The Tanzania National Business Council (TNBC) organised the event. The regions will also formulate strategies that will allow people to get bank loans easily.

"We are required to go to the households. Let's talk to them and understand their needs and consider how to help them,"

Arusha regional commissioner Isidore Shirima said.

His Manyara counterpart Henry Shekifu said acquiring entrepreneurial and business skills would enable people to exploit their resources.

Kilimanjaro regional commissioner, Mohammed Babu said farmers had problems accessing bank loans to invest in inputs.

Information on markets is also poor.

"If farmers get farm inputs and loans and have ample information on markets of their products, then they will be able to increase their incomes," he said.

Tanga acting regional commissioner Ibrahim Msengi said the country's greatest challenge to development was how to modernise agriculture.

"We have abundant fruits that end up rotting in farms simply because farmers are not empowered."

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Economic growth hard to feel - BoT

from IPP Media

By Lydia Shekighenda

The Bank of Tanzania (BoT) has projected that it will be between three and four decades before ordinary wananchi ``feel`` the country`s economic growth.

This is according to BoT Governor Benno Ndulu in a presentation at a forum for researchers and decision-makers in Dar es Salaam yesterday.

Prof Ndulu`s presentation centred on the challenges of growth Tanzania was contending with and was made at an annual research workshop organised by Research on Poverty Alleviation (Repoa).

The BoT chief argued that it was impossible for the results of economic growth to be felt within a short period, adding: ``Last year Tanzania`s economy was projected to have grown by 7.3 per cent.

If we had managed to grow consecutively for a period of 30 to 40 years, then the outcome would have been felt right down to the grassroots level.``

He recommended that greater attention be directed at areas with great potential of leading to positive results in the economy if given the right support.

``We should not focus only on how the economy is growing but also on areas able to provide greater opportunities to our people. This approach could be termed as pro-poor growth,`` he said.

The professor explained that Tanzania`s economy has improved much over the years in terms of structure, sources of growth and exports ``but one of the major challenges ahead is making sure that the country sustains these changes``.

``We should not focus only on how to improve agriculture by providing loans and subsidies on agricultural inputs but we should also come up with strategies with the capacity to bring about positive changes to our economy,`` he pointed out.

The central bank governor also underscored the need for local investors to contribute more substantially to the creation and strengthening of a vibrant private sector.

Opening the workshop, Industry, Trade and Marketing deputy minister Cyril Chami said it was possible to attain and sustain the country`s domestic and global development targets if they were based on a sound domestic economy.

Achievements based mainly on external resources were bound to face problems of sustainability, he asserted, noting that salvation lay in having the country focus on ``the refinement of its growth strategy - which must be brought into sharp focus within the development agenda``.

Repoa executive director Joseph Semboja said the forum has grown into the largest and longest running annual event hosted by his institution.

This year`s participants included researchers, central and local government officials, private sector players, and representatives of civil society organisations, and the donor community.

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Grinding poverty plagues 7 regions

from IPP Media

By Felister Peter

Over 40 per cent of the people in each of seven regions in Tanzania live in extreme poverty, according to the National Economic Empowerment Council.

The council says the worst off region is Singida followed, in a descending order of poverty levels, by Lindi, Mwanza, Coast, Mara, Shinyanga and Ruvuma.

Prof Lucian Msambichaka of NEEC revealed this in a presentation on the National Dialogue on Economic Empowerment in the country at a seminar for journalists held in Dar es Salaam yesterday.

He said statistics show that 63 per cent the people of Tanzania earn below the national per capita income of 313,362/- a year, adding: ``Singida Region leads by having 55.32 per cent of its people earning 208,812/- per year.

It contributes a mere 235,535m/- to the gross domestic product (GDP) each year.``

The corresponding scores for Shinyanga Region were given as 41.96 per cent, 233,166/- and 692,529m/-, while those for Lindi Region are 53.47 per cent, 294,105/- and 237,683m/-.

Prof Msambichaka said Ruvuma Region had 41.28 per cent of its people living in extreme poverty. It had a per capita income of 372,028/- and contributes 434,203m/- to the GDP.

Mara Region, on the other hand, has 45.62 per cent of its people listed as extremely poor, while its per capita income averaged 329,655/- a year.

Mwanza had 48.33 per cent of its population ranked as extremely poor, its per capita income was 309,577/- a year and its contribution to GDP 961,672m/-.

The corresponding figures for Coast Region are 46.08 per cent, 253,607/- and 234,546m/-.

The NEEC executive explained that Mwanza and Shinyanga regions ranked higher on the GDP scale than the rest of the pack, they were plagued by low labour productivity problems because most of their people were not engaged in any money-generating activities.

He said the Tanzania National Business Council in collaboration with NEEC would hold a national dialogue with the relevant stakeholders at different levels at which information and knowledge on modern approaches on the economic empowerment of the Tanzanian people would be made available.

The NEEC`s objective was to enable the people to participate more meaningfully in economic activities, including plans, strategies and policies in the public and private sectors.

``Sustainable national economic development will become a reality in Tanzania only if it is built on the full potential of the people and communities across the country,`` the professor pointed out.

Meanwhile, TNBC Executive Director Dunstan Mrutu said the national dialogue would start at the district level and run on right to the national level.

It would be organised by district and regional business councils and involve government officials and private sector players, including NGOs, across the country.

Mrutu said they had opted for a bottom-up approach that would see Tanzanians living at the grassroots accorded first priority, adding: ``The national dialogue will critically look into the factors inhibiting the development process at the district and regional level and propose policy initiatives to turn things around.``

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Bush unveils new anti-malaria campaign in Tanzania

from AFP via Google

ARUSHA, Tanzania (AFP) — US President George W. Bush unveiled a new plan Monday to hand out millions of bed-nets to defend every Tanzanian child aged one to five from the mosquitoes that spread deadly malaria.

"This is one of the simplest technologies imaginable, but it's also one of the most effective" to combat malaria, Bush said after touring a maternity ward and meeting with mothers and children at Meru District Hospital.

With his top diplomat on a day-long peace mission in neighbouring Kenya, the US president focused on what he called a "campaign of compassion" in Tanzania, the second leg of a five-country swing through Africa.

Bush toured the hospital, a complex of stucco buildings with corrugated tin roofs outside Tanzania's safari capital Arusha, in the shadow of snow-capped Mount Kilimanjaro, and handed out some bed nets and getting hugs in return.

He highlighted US support for the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, pointing to campaigns to spray insecticide, treat children and pregnant women, and hand out insecticide-bearing bed-nets.

"Today, I'm pleased to announce new steps in the bed-net campaign. Within the next six months, the United States and Tanzania, in partnership with the World Bank and the Global Fund, will begin distributing 5.2 million free bed-nets," he told reporters.

"This ambitious nationwide program will provide enough nets to protect every child between the ages of one and five in Tanzania," said Bush."

The US president has used his visit -- which began in Benin on Saturday, and will take him to Rwanda, Ghana and Liberia before he heads back to Washington -- to highlight US-African cooperation to battle disease and poverty.

Malaria remains the number one caus