Tag Archives: John P. Magufuli

Do host governments necessarily “do development” better than foreign donors?

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A common complaint you hear against donor-driven development projects is that they are typically at variance with local priorities; and make no attempts to work along the grain, or build upon existing systems. It turns out that governments in developing countries aren’t any different.

Take the example of the slum upgrading project in the infamous Kibera slum in Nairobi:

A keen look at the Open Street Map for Kibera and Mathare Valley before the NYS initiative started reveals the existence of services such as education, health, water and sanitation points. In Korogocho, Mukuru, Mathare and Kibera self help groups had emerged even before NYS Initiative start to earn daily income from activities such as urban farming, garbage collection and water delivery services. It is a fact that most toilets are not connected to the main sewer and private clinics are either not registered or managed by quacks, while illegal power connections abound.

The NYS Initiative would have scored big by establishing connections with already existing services providers in poor neighbourhoods by either improving their capacity to offer quality and affordable services to the urban poor or by trying to create an enabling environment for slum entrepreneurs to be part of formal and legal business entities. It is a mistake to assume that  there are no service providers within poor neighborhoods. Poverty and lack of basic services is an urban reality which has motivated the establishment of civil society groups to initiate health, education and income generating activities for women and youths as a supplement to government efforts in meeting its obligations. No government in the world can be able to solve the complex community problems of the poor by itself.

And there is an interesting twist to this story…

Experience from Dar es Salaam in Tanzania and the Urban Poverty and Slum Upgrading Project funded by the World Bank might be instructive. The project has some similarities with the NYS project in terms of targeting poor neighborhoods but was able to achieve more success because it worked more closely with local communities and partnered with Dar es Salaam Municipal Council officials from conception to implementation and monitoring stages, a situation which is totally lacking with the National Youth Service projects. The NYS Initiative seems to be a duplication and competition with the mandate of mandate of Nairobi City County.

I do not know about the veracity of the claims about the Dar slum (and I think the NYS budget is fully domestic — after the initial Chinese boost) but right now it’s hard not to feel like Tanzanians are doing everything right; while Kenyans are perennially running around in circles. The Mara Derby is on.

Read the whole thing here.

Kenya is at peak Tanzania envy

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There’s a veritable reason President John Pombe Magufuli is a Tanzanian, and not a Kenyan. It’s the same reason Chief Justice Willy Mutunga is a product of the University of Dar es Salaam, and not the University of Nairobi. President Magufuli embodies the immutable character forged into the Tanzanian identity by President Julius Kambarage Nyerere, the philosopher-king. It’s a national character of service and selflessness that made Tanzania the anchor of the African liberation movement — the Mecca of all black freedom fighters.

It’s a mchicha [sukumawiki] culture of simplicity that eschews public gluttony, impunity, and vileness. That’s why #WhatWouldMagufuliDo has become a household hashtag. Not since President Nyerere have we seen the likes of Mr Magufuli in Africa. There’s a famous quote, attributed variously to Alexis de Tocqueville or Joseph de Maistre, which speaks of the character of a nation, a people. It says that “In a democracy, people elect the government they deserve.” The keys to the nugget are “democracy” and “elect.” In other words, it speaks of the free expression of the will of the people through an open plebiscite. In Tanzania, the people decided to “elect” Mr Magufuli over the opposition candidate, former PM Edward Lowassa. Even before the election, Mr Magufuli had distinguished himself as the hardest working member of the Kikwete government. Mr Lowassa was wildly popular, but Mr Magufuli beat him hands down. The people spoke.

…… In contrast, faced with a stark choice in Kenya in 2013, my compatriots were said to prefer Jubilee’s Uhuru Kenyatta and William Ruto over CORD’s Raila Odinga and Kalonzo Musyoka. The former faced charges for crimes against humanity at the International Criminal Court. I was one among many who placed obstacles in Mr Kenyatta’s election. I argued that electing an ICC indictee wasn’t in the national interest. But voters were polarised along ethnic blocks and failed to see my logic. Today — three years after the election — Kenyans are more depressed than ever, and every new scandal sinks the country into a deeper funk. Most Kenyans today wish Mr Magufuli was a Kenyan. I hate to say I’ve no sympathy.

That’s SUNY Buffalo law professor Makau Mutua writing in the Standard.

This is among a long line of Kenya-Tanzania comparisons that often serve to highlight the relative moral/ethical deficiencies of the former. Kenyans are corrupt and boorish; Tanzanians are polite and virtuous. Kenyans are rabid tribalists; Tanzanians have a strong national identity crafted around Kiswahili as a national language and the great Mwalimu Julius Nyerere’s vision for the Muungano (full disclosure, like Mutua, I am also intellectually enamored by the Dar es Salaam School).

Tanzania: Government officials involved in corruption
Kenya: Government officials involved in corruption

Like all sweeping narratives there is some truth to these comparisons. And bucket loads of unsubstantiated hype. For example, under both Mkapa and Kikwete Tanzania had its share of mega corruption scandals, not unlike what happens north of the Kilimanjaro. Kenya ranks 145/175 in Transparency International’s perception of corruption rankings. Tanzania is at 119/175, still experiencing widespread corruption. The same slight differences are depicted in Afrobarometer survey results (See above. Tanzania is on the left. Question asks for respondents’ perceived share of government officials involved in corruption).

Also, the income of the average Kenyan is almost 1.5 times that of her Tanzanian counterpart. The infant mortality rates (per 1,000 live births) are 37 and 51 in Kenya and Tanzania, respectively.

Mwalimu once quipped that Kenya is a dog-eat-dog society. To which Kenya’s then Attorney General Charles Njonjo replied that Tanzania is a man-eat-nothing society.

Tanzania’s economy may yet outpace Kenya’s in the near future on account of the former’s solid foundation of nationhood. But for now I think it is fair to say that Kenya’s faux “African Socialism” beat Tanzania’s Ujamaa in delivering the goods, the morality of it all notwithstanding.tanzania

Oh, and what about the tired stereotyping of Kenyans as being more hardworking than Tanzanians? Well, according to Pew survey findings a bigger proportion of Tanzanians (than Kenyans) believe that the best way to get ahead is through hard work.

So there is that.