In 2000, Small World Theatre (SWT) collaborated with Tanzanian performers to find out what prevents people, particularly women in economically poor communities, from participating in elections by voting and standing as candidates. The project used drama - participatory theatre - as a research tool. The main focus was on uncovering attitudes and constraints to women's participation in the democratic process in the light of the upcoming (October 2000) multi-party election (the first multiparty election was in 1995).

Tanzania is lagging behind in preparing to sign a deal that will determine how it trades with Europe for a long time to come. Only a few months remain before the end of negotiations for a new Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) between the African, Caribbean and Pacific countries and the European Union. As a member of the Southern African Development Community (SADC), Tanzania’s interests are being negotiated within the South Africa-based economic grouping.

The focus of this study is male rural-urban migration in Tanzania and its interaction with sexual behaviour. The analysis presents results from a comparison with individual-level analyses from two populations, one in an urban area and one in a rural area. The findings challenge the view that return migrants are responsible for the spread of HIV and AIDS in rural areas, and the authors recommends that programmes need to be contextually designed in order to understand the cultural context of migrants.

OIC International, Inc., an International PVO based in Philadelphia, PA, is seeking qualified candidates for the position of Project Director, Education Specialist, and Monitoring and Evaluation Officer, pending the results of our application to the U.S. Department of Labor (USDOL) for an upcoming multi-year initiative, Combating Exploitive Child Labor Through Education, Tanzania

Health officials in Tanzania's semi-autonomous island of Zanzibar have begun spraying thousands of households with a non-toxic insecticide in an effort to control the breeding of mosquitoes that transmit malaria, Africa's top killer. The Zanzibar minister of health and social welfare, Sultani Mohamed Mugheiry, said the support of the entire community was necessary to ensure Zanzibar would be free of malaria by 2008.

Kofi Annan has commended Tanzania for its immense contribution to hosting refugees from the Great Lakes region. During talks with President Jakaya Kikwete at the seventh ordinary session of the African Union Summit that has brought together Heads of State and government in Banjul, Gambia, Dr Annan said it was unfair for the UN to recognise countries that give material and moral support to refugees as the donors and forget host countries.

The traditional knowledge of pastoralists has enabled them to survive difficult and often changing environments throughout history. Despite this potential, indigenous knowledge is often unrecognised by development initiatives and risks being lost, leading to household food insecurity amongst these groups.

At least 8,800 children in Tanzania's semiautonomous island of Zanzibar are missing school and wasting away their childhood as they engage in various forms of child labour, a government minister has said. Most parents have their children engage in activities such as fishing and picking cloves and consider this as part of the child's education.

This book of 90 critical and thought-provoking essays, selected from over 150 written between 1990 and 2005 in three different newspapers, captures the richness of Shivji’s contributions as a public intellectual. It deals with the period when Tanzania under external pressures from donors and financial institutions was forced down the road of neo-liberalism.

The Tanzanian government will recruit almost 6,000 teachers within the next two months in a bid to address an acute shortage in its secondary schools, a minister said on Monday 19 June.

Bilateral trade between China and Tanzania has increased by almost 70%, climaxing at US$47million last year. According to the secretary of bilateral trade at the Chinese Embassy in Dar es Salaam, imports by China from Tanzania went up by 150.1% valued at $17million while exports from China to Tanzania increased by 40.6% to $3 million. The increase is attributed to the special preferential tariff (SPT) agreement-involving 190 tariff items-to the most undeveloped countries in Africa.

Authorities on Tanzania's semiautonomous island of Zanzibar have intensified efforts to control the importation of chicken in a bid to check the threat of bird flu on the island. The deadly H5N1 strain of avian flu has already been reported in several African countries. The poultry industry in Asia and a number of European countries has been ravaged by the disease, which has also claimed dozens of human lives.

Countrywide power rationing, which was shelved two months ago in the wake of stable rainfall, would resume towards the end of this month and intensify next month following failure by the rains to fill up Mtera dam, it has been learnt. This has forced the Tanzania Electric Supply Company (Tanesco) to shut down generation at Mtera since March, but the utility firm maximized output at the other hydro plants, which resulted in higher rate of water outflow compared to inflow.

A case challenging the legality of the union that created the United Republic of Tanzania - a merger of the Tanganyika mainland and the two isles of Zanzibar has began in Stone Town, capital of the semiautonomous Zanzibar. A group of 10 Zanzibaris filed the case on 23 April before the Zanzibar High Court, seeking to have the union, signed in 1964, invalidated. The group, led by Rashid Salum Addiy, claims the 42-year-old union is illegal and wants it renegotiated.

MS-Training Centre for Development Cooperation is calling for applicants to a course on Sustainable Livelihood Approaches to Poverty to be offered from 5th to 23rd June 2006. For further information on this course please contact the Course Administrator at [email][email protected] and visit our website

The World Bank has approved a massive $200 million grant to the Tanzanian government towards its poverty reduction programme. The Fourth Poverty Reduction Support Credit (PRSC-4) is aimed at helping the government provide incentives to implement key economic, social and institutional reforms to strengthen the overall performance of the economy and contribute to poverty alleviation. A key outcome of the reform programme, which is also supported by 13 other donors, over the period 2006-2010, is to sustain high rates of economic growth in the range of 6-8 per cent annually. If achieved, the World Bank says that this will "translate into a significant reduction of poverty incidence in the country."

Tanzania is still suffering from the hangover of state control of the media, which was practised from 1965 until 1992. According to a report by the Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA) entitled, So This is Democracy? The State of Media Freedom and Freedom of Expression in Southern Africa for 2005, under the multiparty system there has been a dramatic increase in the number of privately-owned newspapers competing with government media. However, the report says that the weak economic base of media owners has also led to alliances between the state, private media owners and business tycoons at the expense of press freedom.

Although Zanzibar's Kataa Malaria initiative has reduced the malaria caseload on the island, misinformation about the safety of insecticide-treated bed nets - a cornerstone of the programme - has left many people exposed to the disease, which kills one million people around the world each year. In December 2005, Tanzania became one of 15 beneficiaries of a US $1.2-billion initiative to fight malaria in sub-Sahara Africa, where 90 percent of all global malaria deaths occur. United States President George W Bush's Malaria Initiative (PMI) is funded through the US Agency for International Development (USAID). As a beneficiary, Zanzibar received 240,000 long-lasting, insecticide-treated bed nets for local distribution to pregnant women and children up to age five years, the groups most vulnerable to the disease.

The practice of paying bride price is one of the factors contributing to women in Tanzania suffering sexual abuse, battery and denial of their right to own property, a study conducted by the Tanzania Media Women Association says. The association's report is based on a survey it conducted between January and March in 10 of Tanzania mainland's 21 regions. The survey showed that young men who could not afford bride price ended up living with women and having children without formal marriages.

It sounds funny indeed. After half a year of crippling power cuts in Tanzania, nobody had thought about potential electricity generation options other than natural gas, coal, solar, thermal, and probably wind farms. Now, investors from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) have come with a seemingly curious idea: They want to risk USD168million of seed capital for investing in a power generation facility using Tanzania's Indian Ocean's territorial waters.