Transcript of Interview with H. E. Jakaya Mrisho Kikwete

H.E. Jakaya Mrisho Kikwete, President of the United Republic of Tanzania, was interviewed by the World Bank in March 2007. This is a transcript of his comments. 

"Development funding is what has made us what we are today. I can say that honestly, because development assistance has really helped us compliment the efforts that we are doing at the local level, being a poor nation with all levels of development, low capacities in terms of resources, so development funding is what has made the difference. You see better roads in the country now but this has been development assistance. We are talking of a lot of achievements in the education sector, in the health sector - in many of these sectors - in the energy sector essentially it has been the contribution of development funding. So, the role has been quite critical for our growth.

IDA?  IDA has been almost everything, because the World Bank has been our largest supporter in terms of our development endeavors in the country. I think no institution has extended to us - no single institution has extended to us - development assistance as much as the World Bank has done. And IDA, the concessional arm, has been tremendous in terms of giving us their support.

If IDA is replenished well we will see more support, because we still need a lot of support, definitely. We have not reached a point where we can say that we don’t need much support. So, we really appeal to the donor nations to replenish IDA well, so that there is going to be more resources for us to access in our development endeavors.

We were as you may know a command economy, a centrally planned economy, but we embarked on reforms, beginning in the late 1980’s. So, now we moved the economy from a centrally controlled economy to a market based economy. And then of course we decided to bite the bullet, so they say and it has paid dividends. Now, there is greater macroeconomic stability in the country. The growth rate is good. The social indicators also look good in education. Primary education is at 96.1% now, when you look at what we were - 59% in 2000. More people now have access to health services but there is still a big challenge ahead of us.

The major challenge for me is how to attain higher growth levels, because if we were able to get to 8-10% growth, sustained over a period of 10 years probably that’s going to really make the difference. We are quite keen on improving on agriculture - modernization of agriculture. Eighty of the people live in the rural areas. Agriculture livestock keeping and fishing is their main stay. But it is peasant agriculture -- subsistence agriculture - living from hand to mouth. Its subsistence livestock keeping; subsistence fishing from dugout canoes. People really don't earn much.

We know we have a strong raw material base, agro base, mineral base, forest base. At least we have the basic raw materials that we can start the manufacturing sector, processing sector. These are the areas - the things that we are trying to do. We are trying to see what we can do to expand our tourism sector, improve on our tourism.

The situation has changed but we are still one of the poorest countries. We need to do more. When we compare with the past we are better off now than we were, but still at very, very low levels of development."