Know before you go: Tanzanian roads most dangerous in EAC
By Felix Magezi
A recent review on road accident in Tanzania shows that fatality rate per 10,000 vehicles is 30 to 40 times higher than in the safest and highly motorized countries in the world. It is also higher compared to some of the neighboring countries and trading partners including the East African Community and Southern African Development Community (SADC).
Statistics by the Traffic Police as quoted in the latest published National Road Safety Policy caution that road accidents were a growing concern. Tanzania’s roads carry 70 per cent of freight and 90 per cent of the passengers across the nation.
Tanzanian Roads
As at December 2007, Tanzania had 382,152 registered vehicles having risen sharply compared to 2005 and 2006 when 231,197 and 311,712 vehicles were registered apart from donor funded project and government vehicles. According to the report, all these vehicles are assumed to be operating without proper inspection mechanism.
A total of 3,619 road accidents claimed the lives of 384 people and injured 2,293 others in Dar es Salaam between January and June this year, according to Jeremiah Makorere, Dar es Salaam regional chairman of the country's Road Safety Committee.
The present system should change by putting in place a legal framework to regulate and control the use of second hand vehicles. At present, there are four government ministries responsible for vehicle inspections, which lack coordination.
Money down the gutter
According to statistics, road accidents have been causing heavy losses to the national economy. Statistics by the National Bureau of Industrial Cooperation (BIDCO) of the University of Dar es Salaam showed that in 2006 financial loss due to road accident was estimated at Tsh. 508bn/-.
Apart from the humanitarian aspect of reducing road deaths and injuries, in developing
countries like Tanzania, a strong case can be made for reducing road accident deaths on economic grounds alone, as they consume massive financial resources that the country can ill afford to lose.
Most investors prefer to invest in a place safer not only politically but also transport-wise. The government needs to get its act together to make the roads safe to lure potential investors.
The New Policy
The new National Road Safety Policy demands that the government should enact regulations that set appropriate and affordable standards of vehicle roadworthiness that are in line with SADC protocols and best practices.
The policy notes that a large portion of road crashes are not reported to the police and greatly underestimate the scale of the problem suggesting that police data should be supplemented with data from hospitals and clinics.
In Tanzania drivers are responsible for about 90% of all accidents which occurs. Their most common faults are driving at excessive speeds, driving in the wrong lane, failure to yield right of way to another car or pedestrian, and following the vehicle ahead too closely. Two weeks ago, Bagamoyo road residents held a demonstration against drivers who drive recklessly causing accidents to their children demanding the government construct road-bumps.
The Law and the Loopholes
In the late 2000s the authorities in Tanzania introduced the system of speed governors which was expected to control the speed of vehicles in order to reduce accidents.
Some drivers have been removing these speed governors in order to protect their business. “When we use speed governors our passengers complain that we don’t know how to drive and the next day you will find out that they don’t want to use your vehicle because of low speed,” said Khamis Hamza at the Ubungo bus terminal.
The Police also have to actively enforce the law that requires all private vehicles to have a third party insurance, and the commissioner of Insurance should create a comprehensive database for motor vehicle insurance matters and establish a fund to compensate the victims of uninsured and untraceable drivers.
As Tanzania officially entered the common market protocol it has been revealed that East African Countries record the highest number of fatal road accidents in the World. The fatality rate per 10,000 vehicles is 65 for Kenya, 111 for Tanzania and 122 for Uganda. As we mark the road safety week it should be noted that 65% of the fatalities in the EAC region involve passengers in public transport vehicles and pedestrians.
A global support for Kilimo Kwanza
By Felix Magezi
PRESIDENT Jakaya Kikwete’s fourth phase government has tried all the tricks to develop agriculture in the country. They have changed the law to introduce lease financing to enable farmers to purchase equipment, like tractors and farmers witnessed the introduction of a seed research centre. Kilimo kwanza programme is supposed to be a holistic way of introducing green revolution in the country. But what has green revolution meant for other countries? Will Tanzania learn the lessons of history or just follow blindly into another mismanaged agricultural policy?
The Lessons of History
Malawi was on the brink of famine in 2001. Reacting to the situation Malawi launched in 2005 the Agricultural Input Subsidy Program by which vouchers are given to smallholder farmers to buy subsidized nitrogen fertilizer and maize seeds. Within its first year, the program was very successful, producing the largest maize harvest of the country's history; enough to feed to country with tons of maize left over. The program has been more and more successful every year since. Donors have changed their policies on agricultural subsidies and have begun funding Malawi's program and developing several other coordinating programs in the country. Malawi's success has been hailed as a miracle and donor organizations around the world say that Malawi is a proof that an African Green Revolution is actually possible.
President Bingu Mutharika of Malawi said that even though his country was poor, he would not be a President that begs for food. He took the bold steps needed and went against conventional views and advice of donors. He decided to implement a national seed and fertilizer subsidy program. With a budget of $60 million, the government embarked on an ambitious effort to ensure that every poor farmer in Malawi had access to seeds and fertilizers. The result has been remarkable.
The nation produced over 1.3 million metric tons of maize above its national food consumption requirements. It did more: it exported $160 million worth of maize, and gave 10,000 metric tons as food aid to its neighboring counties (Lesotho and Botswana) which were experiencing droughts. Malawi is now being hailed as an example of how strong leadership and political will can help unleash a revolution for farmers. If Malawi can do it, every African country can.
Nigeria has turned itself from a sleeping cassava giant into an aggressive, productive, efficient and competitive producer and marketer of cassava and cassava-derived high value products.
The Federal Government initiated a bold effort to ensure that Nigeria is able to capitalize on its high production of cassava and achieve the goal of earning $5 billion annually from cassava exports. The Presidential Initiative on Cassava helped to spur increased interest in cassava production. But the goal is yet to be achieved in any significant way.
The Green Revolution has also been criticized as unsustainable. It requires immense amounts of capital each year to purchase equipment and fertilizers. This may lead to a cycle of debt if a farmer is unable to pay off the loans required each year. Additionally, the crops require so much water that water tables in some regions of India which had adopted similar policies to Kilimo Kwanza in the 1960s have dropped dramatically. If this drop continues, it is possible that the process of desertification may take place. Already, the low water is starting the process of salinization in the western parts of India. If continued, this would leave the land infertile, spelling disaster.
Tunes we have heard before
The Kilimo Kwanza as thought up by the Government in Tanzania is expected to give farmers access to research, sustainable market and credit from the Agriculture Development Bank. The New Impetus for Agriculture is aiming at research for better yielding seeds and provision of market access to farmers.
There is a vision that the Agricultural Bank will sustain farmers but there is doubt if it will work because Government sponsored credit system led by an agriculture development bank by nature cannot efficiently utilize information about the utility of the program. The information that the bank gathers from its clients will not be disbursed to the population at large. When a bank provides a loan to the farmer, the information that it collects will be filed away for safe keeping becoming private information instead of entering the public domain.
One can almost predict the demise of the agricultural bank before it is established. It is because agriculture banks in poor countries are hardly ever successful. After all this is not a tune we have not heard before.
We heard it in 1967 when the Arusha declaration promised Tanzania a new society where by development of Agriculture through communal farming would be emphasized.
The World Bank sponsored plan up to 1982 had already invested in 26 agricultural operations. In Tanzania, concentration on rural development was seen as the key to achieving the Bank's basic goal: rapid elimination of poverty, possibly before the end of the century. The outcome was tragic: arrested development in agriculture and other sectors, more poverty rather than less.
Today, more than three quarters of the population is still rural. Most farmers still use traditional, hand-tool techniques and can rarely cultivate more than two hectares. Farm incomes remain very low and more than half of the rural population is poor.
“Kilimo Kwanza” for Tanzania should be built on technology and innovation aimed at the needs and capabilities of millions of smallholder farmers and at coping with the country’s varying climate conditions. Tanzania’s smallholder farmers can benefit from new technologies such as low-cost drip irrigation and plastic water tanks to store runoff, as opposed to modern irrigation systems which can increase crop yields but are designed for larger farms.
The green revolution is vital if Tanzania and Africa in general wants to reduce extreme poverty and hunger by 2015 as agreed by the millennium development Goals (MDGs). Agriculture forms the basis of many African economies and provides the largest source of employment and livelihood for Africans. However, per capita food production in the least developed countries (LDCs) has declined continuously over the past 40 years – dropping by one-fifth between the early 1970s and the mid-2000s.
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