His Excellency Jakaya Kikwete
STATEMENT BY HIS EXCELLENCY JAKAYA MRISHO KIKWETE, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED REPUBLIC OF TANZANIA, AT THE OPENING OF THE 2012 SYMPOSIUM ON DEVELOPMENT, UNIVERSITY OF DAR ES SALAAM, 12TH DECEMBER, 2012
Excellencies;
Vice Chancellor of the UDSM, Prof. R. Mukandala;
Prof. Delphin Rwegasira, Mwalimu Nyerere Professional Chair;
Prof. Batram Mapunda, Principal – College of Arts and Social Science;
Dr. Adolf Mkanda, Head of Economics Development;
Distinguished Guests;
Ladies and Gentlemen:
At the outset, I thank Prof. Mukandala for inviting me to officiate at the opening of the 2012 Symposium on Development. I commend the organizers for re-launching a national dialogue on our country’s economic development. Some years back, the University’s Economics Department and the then Economic Research Bureau used to organize national policy workshops which addressed strategic issues and development challenges of the time. Those workshops which involved a wide spectrum of stakeholders played an important role in building national consensus and shaping public policy on a number of development issues. In this regard, I very much welcome this initiative of reviving this all important event. I am sure I am speaking on behalf of many people.
Ladies and Gentlemen;
The overall theme of the symposium, Enhancing Human Capital and Productivity for the Faster Development of Tanzania, is both, relevant and opportune. It is relevant because lack of adequate human capital and low productivity are among the major constraints to faster economic growth and development in our country. It is opportune because one of our priorities and pre-occupation in the first Five Year Development Plan is enhancing human capital development.
Ladies and Gentlemen;
You will agree with me that education, training for skills development and good health status of the people of this country are key components for enhancement of human capacity. Whereas education is important in increasing efficiency in resource utilization and through more equitable distribution of income, health and nutrition are important factors for increasing productivity and economic performance of individuals. This is so because healthier workers are more energetic and robust, they are less likely to be absent from work on account of poor health and therefore are more productive and generate better incomes for themselves and society at large.
Mr. Vice – Chancellor;
Ladies and Gentlemen;
Based on this fact, our Government took deliberate steps to scale up investment in education and health. For the past seven years we have treated Education sector as a priority number one in our budget allocation. Health sector has equally been elevated to priority number three from seventh. We have increased the budget for education, for example, from Tsh.669.5 billion in 2005/06 Tsh.3.6 trillion or 24 percent of the budget in 2012/13. Similarly, we have increased health budget from Tsh.271 billion in 2005/06 Tsh.1.5 trillion or 10 percent of the budget in 2012/13.
As result, we have achieved phenomenon expansion in education at all levels. In some primary schools, we have increased the number of classrooms while in some places we built new primary schools. As a result many children of school going age are now in primary schools as enrolment is at 97 percent. Tanzania is well positioned to meet the MDG target of 100 percent enrolment by 2015. If all things remain according to plan.
There has been huge expansion in secondary and higher education. Community participation in building schools has been unprecedented and has been the lynchpin. As a result the number of secondary schools has increased from 1,745, of which 1,202 were government schools in 2005 to 4,528 secondary schools of which 3,508 are government schools now. The number of secondary school students has also increased from 524,325 in 2005 to 1,884,272 currently. Similarly, the number of students in institutions of higher learning has increased from 40,719 in 2005 to 166,484 in 2011/12. We have also expanded vocational education, as almost each region has a vocational training center. We are now moving further down to the district level.
This rapid expansion in access to education has its challenges. It demands a commensurate investment to cater for the quality of education so provided. This was very much related to availability of teachers, text books, science laboratories and other relevant teaching aids. In response to the need for more teachers we embarked on a major program to train more teachers. Almost all universities now have faculties to train teachers, with the University of Dar es Salaam and the University of Dodoma taking the lead. Also, there has been an increased public and private sector investment in teacher training colleges to train certificate and diploma level teachers. The number of teachers who graduated from universities and teacher training colleges has increased tremendously. In 2005 we received 500 secondary school graduate teachers, todate we are getting 14,000. I have no doubt in my mind that by 2015 there will be no shortage of teachers except for science teachers. I have directed the relevant stakeholders to look into the matter and come up with relevant proposals to deal with the problem.
Regarding science laboratories, work is well underway in building science laboratories, but we need to hasten the pace. Many secondary schools are yet to be covered. It is for this reason, that while on tour of Singida Region recently, I instructed all Regional and District Commissioners to ensure that each secondary school in their areas of jurisdiction build and operate laboratories for Biology, Chemistry and Physics within the next two years. I know this is doable.
Government on its part will provide all necessary laboratory equipment, and teaching and reading materials whose availability have now been improved. The increase in the education budget is meant also to meet the needs for text books and teaching materials as well as teachers’ housing. With regard to teachers housing a major programme is underway to deal with the problem in shortest possible time. This is a critical requirement because unlike in the past when such schools were in towns where there were houses to rent, now they are in the villages where there are not as many houses to rent as in towns.
In the Health sector, we have developed 10 year Primary Health Care Development Programme (2007 -2017), referred to as “Mpango wa Maendeleo ya Afya ya Msingi – MMAM” in Swahili. The objective of the MMAM programme is to accelerate the provision of quality primary health care services to all the people by strengthening the existing health systems through provision of health facilities at village and ward level so that people access these facilities at a radius of no more than 5 kilometers. Furthermore, the Programme is aiming at improving the referral system, accelerating training and deployment of human resource for health; increasing the health sector financing and expanding the provision of medicines, equipment and supplies at all levels.
Indeed, we have increased health infrastructure. By 2010 we had built 1,403 dispensaries, 167 health centers and 24 hospitals. We have reduced intensified the fight against major diseases including malaria, TB, HIV/AIDS and the outcomes look positive as infections are decreasing. In the case of malaria we have reduced malaria infection rate by 40 percent following the distribution of 34,477,173 treated nets and indoor residual spraying. The rate of HIV infection has also declined from 9.4 percent in 1990s to 5.7 currently. The number of people who have access to safe and clean water and sanitation has increased. Our target is to increase access to safe and clean water from 58 percent to 65 percent in rural areas and from 74 percent to 90 percent in urban areas by 2015.
We have and continue to expand on the training of various health personnel. Existing training institutions have been expanding enrolment and new ones have been built and continue to be built. As a result more doctors, nurse and other health professionals are graduating today than they were a decade ago. The prospects look even brighter as more expansion and building of new colleges and universities is being undertaken in the country.
Mr. Vice – Chancellor;
Ladies and Gentlemen;
The all-important issue of growth and distribution (or growth and poverty-reduction), addressed in one of the papers, has been facing us for quite some time, whether in purely national or international discourses. The evidence with respect to aggregate growth (approaching an annual average of 7 percent in the last one decade) clearly indicates that our performance has been strong in absolute and relative terms. The structure of that growth, however, has tended to be concentrated in some sectors, with the consequences that the impact in respect of poverty reduction, especially in rural areas, and overall job creation in the formal sector has been less than desirable.
There may be disagreements on the measurement of the impact of the experienced growth in reducing poverty, or indeed on the poverty levels themselves, but the basic conclusion is unavoidable: that is, apart from the need to accelerate overall growth, strategies and programmes to promote broader-based and more inclusive growth are necessary. So, further exploration of these issues, in this Symposium and elsewhere, ranging from seeking greater understanding of the growth-poverty dynamics to requisite strategies for rapidly overcoming rural poverty especially, should be helpful.
Ladies and Gentlemen;
The problem of poverty and its rural concentration is, in the case of our country, related to the state of our agriculture. Agricultural activities, together with fishing, produce less than a quarter of the gross domestic product, but support about three-quarters of the population. This clearly shows that productivity in those activities combined must be very low. The Symposium sub-theme that is focused on how to marshal human capital and technology for agricultural modernization and productivity is, therefore, particularly relevant for Tanzania’s efforts for rapid poverty reduction and faster growth. Our recent policies and interventions through the “Kilimo Kwanza” Initiative and elsewhere have been motivated by similar considerations. Insights from close examination and discussion of these inter-related issues, as well as from careful comparisons of other country experiences, should assist in widening our understanding and in formulating the requisite rural development policies.
Beyond a more productive agriculture, our country’s poverty reduction efforts and the promotion of broader prosperity can be substantially supported by maximizing gains from the productive exploitation of other natural endowments, apart from land per se. Mineral endowments, including gas, stand out on this, but the endowment benefits should of course, be broadly considered to include those that can be made from forests, water and marine resources, tourism, manufacturing, services and so on. A critical factor for maximizing the gains from natural endowments seems, from cross-country evidence, to be the capacity of Tanzania to negotiate beneficial contracts with foreign companies, and to technically and otherwise manage the exploitation of the natural resources. Tanzania’s own recent experience, especially with minerals, has increasingly pointed to the great importance of this capacity factor. The thinking-aloud under the indicated Symposium sub-theme should, therefore, enrich the participants’ understanding of these crucial issues, not only in historical perspective but also in terms of the challenges ahead.
The Symposium is also set to address issues directly pertaining to productivity trends, science and technology, and skills development. These are issues that by and large relate to the enhancement of human capital for faster development in the future. They bear importantly on our vision of future Tanzania which, as indicated in our current Five-Year Development Plan is targeted to grow at about 10 percent on average from 2016 to 2025. In envisaging such a shift in production possibilities and taking into account the experiences of other middle-income countries, the Development Plan emphasized these issues, including innovation. A further exchange of views, especially on the relevant constraints and opportunities should, therefore, clarify the path toward middle-income status for Tanzania.
Mr. Vice – Chancellor;
Excellencies;
Ladies and Gentlemen;
Let me end here, by commending the organizers of the Symposium for a job well done. I encourage the University of Dar es Salaam, given its historical role that we all know, to continue on this path of thinking aloud and providing intellectual leadership in these issues. My colleagues and I in Government look forward to receiving your conclusions and analyses, and to using them in various ways in strengthening, the development of our country.
It is now my pleasure, to declare that the University of Dar es Salaam’s 2012 Symposium on Development is open.
I thank you for your kind attention.