The Tanzanian government last Thursday said it will increase spending by 24.7% in the upcoming fiscal year to allow it to distribute antiretroviral drugs to HIV-positive people at no cost, implement poverty-reduction programs and pay for an election, Reuters reports. The Tanzanian government earlier this year announced that it plans to increase the number of HIV-positive people receiving antiretroviral drugs at no cost from about 4,000 to 44,000.

The Head of Project will assume overall responsibility for delivering a major mass media project to address HIV/AIDS in Tanzania. The project will meet agreed targets and objectives, and be delivered on time and on budget. The role will include management of an in-country production team and project office, ensuring the quality and cohesion of media outputs, establishing and managing effective partnerships with local media, government, NGOs and other key stakeholders.

A local Tanzania pharmaceutical company will begin producing generic anti-retroviral drugs (ARVs) in mid-2006 from a factory in the northern town of Arusha, an official with the firm announced on Monday. "We are optimistic that the locally produced ARVs will be accessible to many HIV/AIDS patients in Tanzania," Ramadhani Madabida, the managing director Tanzania Pharmaceutical Industries (TPI), told IRIN.

Tanzania said on Monday it will end a contract with two European-based water and sewerage companies, in a blow to a privatisation plan some saw as an African test case. Tanzania said it was cancelling its contract with City Water Services, a partnership between Britain's Biwater, Germany's HP Gauff and a Tanzanian partner, because of non-performance under a 10-year contract.

Marauding elephants continue to cause havoc in northern Tanzania, where they have destroyed 80 hectares of crops and disrupted learning for children who now have to be escorted to school, an official told IRIN on Monday. "Some parents are even afraid to escort their children for treatment in clinics for fear of encountering the animals," said Anthony Malley, the district commissioner for Monduli, northwest of the region's main town, Arusha.

Hundreds of thousands of Dar es Salaam residents could continue to experience acute water shortages if a row between the Tanzanian government and a private international water company remains unresolved. The government announced on Friday it had terminated a 10-year contract with City Water, for what it described as "poor performance". The firm had been contracted to provide water to the estimated three million residents of the city and its neighbouring districts of Kibaha and Bagamoyo.

Older people in Tanzania say medical staff in health centres often treat them disrespectfully by talking to them in a mocking tone. The findings are revealed at the end of the three year Older Citizen's Monitoring project, set up to monitor older people's access to health services. Groups in Arusha and Dodoma have successfully lobbied local government to ensure free health care for all older people. The project was launched in 2002 in two areas in the country, Arusha and Dodoma. It's aim is to increase older people's participation in gathering information, forming supporting networks, developing confidence and approaches in talking to governments, and challenging authorities about their rights, including access to basic services.

Tanzania will in 2006 officially adopt a new combination therapy for the treatment of malaria to replace SP or sulphadoxine/pyrimethamine, a standard first line drug, which is now ineffective against the disease. "Studies conducted in malaria endemic countries by the [UN] World Health Organization [WHO] have established that the drug is no longer effective," Hussein Mwinyi, the assistant minister for health, said on Wednesday at a news conference in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania's commercial capital.

Tanzania's ruling party has nominated Foreign Minister Jakaya Kikwete as its presidential candidate for the general election on 30 October. The Chama Cha Mapinduzi party's choice is widely expected to become the next president, replacing Benjamin Mkapa. Mr Mkapa is stepping down after serving two five-year terms, the maximum allowed under the constitution.

Effective with the release of this notice, the Jane Goodall Institute (JGI) is soliciting applicants for the Jane Goodall Institute – Tanzania Executive Director Position. Please find available by clicking on the link below background information on JGI, and projects and activities managed and implemented under the managerial oversight of the JGI – Tanzania Executive Director. The responsibilities, duties, and qualifications for this position are described in the position description section. The ideal candidate for this position is a Tanzania national.

From colonial resource exploitation to the negative impact of rampaging neo-liberalism, Africa has always followed behind the experience of Latin America. With general elections due to take place in late October in Tanzania, Issa Shivji asks why the candidates aren’t talking about how the country is going to avoid recent Latin American experiences with the Washington Consensus?

Latin America in the third world is a good barometer of what follows and what to expect in Africa, particularly in relation to economic policies. Being in the backyard of a superpower, Latin America’s experience tends to be more severe and so is the anti-imperial resistance of its people. The experience of imperialist-generated military coups that we had in Africa during the first two decades of independence was preceded by a similar wave of militarism in Latin America. US-supported Mobutus and UK-Israel supported Idi Amins, were pale shadows of the suppression, torture, and disappearances of the CIA-installed Pinochets.

The pillage of the resources of the DRC, the former Congo-Zaire, is a mirror image of the century old pillage of the timber, oil, mineral and other natural resources of Latin America by imperialism. Now that imperial powers have turned their attention to the African oil in West Africa, Sudan and possibly the Eastern seaboard, we may well be on the way to repeat that tragic episode in Latin American history. God forbid.

In Africa, our leaders tend to cower before our imperial paymasters. Somehow we seem to be so impervious to lessons of history, both our own and others’, that we tragically repeat it. Important substitution industrialization was tried out in Latin America long before we experimented with it. It failed. Yet we didn’t learn from Latin America’s failure. The free market and privatisation policies worked out by the IMF, the World Bank and US Treasury called the “Washington consensus” has been on in Latin America for some time now. The policy prescriptions of the IFIs (International Financial Institutions) for Africa were virtually carbon-copies of those imposed in Latin America.

I once downloaded some of the IFI-generated policy papers for Argentina and found that they were so similar to those for Tanzania; you only had to change the country name and currency denomination!

Argentina became the star of the Washington consensus. The IMF held it up as a showpiece. Water, electricity, telecommunications, gas, post office, the national airline and many other state companies were cut up and sold off within years. Foreign investment flowed in at the rate of US$800 million a month. The GDP grew by 10 per cent. Ten years into the reforms, Menem, once a populist president of Argentina, now wholly taken in by the “Washington Consensus”, went to the US declaring that his country had pulled off an economic miracle: hyperinflation had been brought under control, corruption was reduced and everybody was happy. The Argentinian middle class deposited their pesos in dollar accounts, thanks to easy convertibility.

Then came the great crash in 2001 as banks could no longer honour deposits and billions of dollars flowed out at a faster rate than they had flowed in. Within 5 days in July (2002) alone, 2.6 billion dollars left the country. By 2002 the GDP had fallen by 21 per cent, a performance similar to the depression years of the 1930s. Even middle class professionals, including engineers and bankers and white collar workers found themselves with begging bowls in the street. Some attempted to commit suicide while, once passive, society-women were out demonstrating in the streets banging their fancy, but empty, pots and pans. Governments changed every week. The ‘Washington’ baby collapsed like a pack of cards. Argentina threatened to default on its $141 billion foreign debt. The IMF pumped in more billions which came through the door and left through the window in the form of capital flight and debt servicing.

The rise and fall of the neo-liberal experiment in Argentina, which reduced a once prosperous country to economic ruins, thanks to the “Washington consensus”, made a great impression on the South American continent. A wave of backlash against the free market and privatisation set in. Left presidents have been elected in a number of countries through popular vote, the best example of which is Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez. The American-backed attempt to overthrow him did not survive. He was out of the state house for two days but was literally reinstalled by massive demonstrations of the poor – the “wretched of the earth” - from the slums of Caracas. But the rich and middle classes did not give up. The imperialist media kept instigating and middle class opposition was mobilized to call for a referendum to overthrow Chavez. In August 2004, Richard Gott reported:

“To the dismay of opposition groups in Venezuela, and to the surprise of international observers gathering in Caracas, President Hugo Chavez is about to secure a stunning victory on August 15, in a referendum designed to lead to his overthrow. First elected in 1998 as a barely known colonel, armed with little more than revolutionary rhetoric and a moderate social-democratic programme, Chavez has become the leader of the emerging opposition in Latin America to the neo-liberal hegemony of the United States.”

In a recent speech Chavez finally declared.

"I am convinced, at this stage of my life - I am now 50 years old - after six years as a president, after nearly 30 years of political struggle, since 1997, when I had the idea of taking an oath from a small group of fellow countrymen, soldiers, to create the first nucleus - there were only about 5 of us then - of what later became the MBR-200 [Bolivarian Revolutionary Movement 200] ... after many readings, debates, discussions and many travels around the world, etc., I am convinced, and I think that this conviction will be for the rest of my life, that the path to a new, better and possible world, is not capitalism, the path is socialism, that is the path: socialism, socialism…Capitalism leads us straight to hell.”

The experiences of Latin America are passing us by in Africa. Our intellectuals and leaders continue swearing by the “Washington consensus” whereas we should be learning from history.

In this election year, we should be taking stock of the last twenty, particularly the last ten, years of neo-liberal reforms. In taking stock we should not only critically examine our own experience but also the experience of other continents which have gone through a very similar process. Regrettably none of this is happening. The so-called free media does not even report of such experiences like Argentina. Instead, editorial writers are busy positioning themselves to curry favours from the establishment. Some of them are more establishment-minded then the establishment itself.

Our aspirants for “serving the people” , for that is the cliché politicians use during the election season, are talking little of ‘service’ or ‘people’, and more about preserving “the good” done by the third phase government. But why don’t we also learn from the bad of the first, the second and the third phase and, indeed, from the effects of the global hegemony of neo-liberalism elsewhere?

Aren’t Argentina and Venezuela relevant to our people? Shouldn’t our aspirants be telling us what they have learnt from those experiences and how do they propose to avoid the Argentinisation of Tanzania?

© Issa Shivji. Shivji is Professor of Law at the University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

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"If there is such thing as the development zeitgeist, it is today embodied by the linked concepts of good governance, democracy and human rights. In the pages that follow, this trinity is referred to as the 'democracy agenda'. More specifically, the Report is concerned with the related programmes of the United Nations Development Programme's (UNDP), most notably rule of law, media reform, civil-society support, election-support and state capacity-building. In the light of widespread evidence that, for the United Nations (UN), the democracy agenda does not crown 50 years of stunning development achievements, what might this new agenda hold?" This is the introduction to a research report from the Centre for Civil Society at the University of KwaZulu-Natal called 'Wishful thinking, Willful blindness and artful amnesia: Power and the UNDP's promotion of democracy in Botswana, Namibia and Tanzania'.

Maternal mortality in Tanzania has remained unacceptably high, claiming the lives of 529 women for every 100,000 live births, Anna Abdallah, the country's minister of health told IRIN. This death rate, she said, had remained unchanged since the 1990s and the underlying cause for this included malaria, anaemia and HIV/AIDS. She also said the number of pregnant women with access to health services had dropped from 44 percent in the early 1990s to 36 percent today.

A Tanzanian official announced on Friday that the rate of HIV infections in the country had declined from 10 percent in 2002 to 7 percent in 2003-2004, with more infections in urban areas than in the countryside. "Tanzanians living in cities are more likely to be infected with HIV than their rural counterparts," Herman Lupogo, the executive chairman on the Tanzania Commission for AIDS (TACAIDS), said.

Tanzania’s government has sent police and paramilitary officers to volatile Zanzibar to harass opposition supporters ahead of elections, an opposition party has claimed. It also accused the government of redrawing constituency boundaries to weaken concentrations of opposition voters. Zanzibar, which united with Tanganyika to form Tanzania in 1964, retains the right to elect its own parliament and president.

Some 5,500 Burundian refugees in Tanzania will be relocated to another camp towards the end of this month as part of plans to consolidate camps amid the ongoing Burundi repatriation operation. A tripartite agreement between the United Republic of Tanzania, Burundi and UNHCR states that all Tanzanian camps with a refugee population of under 10,000 will be closed. This is an attempt to consolidate camps that empty out with the departure of Burundian refugees for home.

Tanzania is losing some 2,880 teachers to HIV/AIDS every year, said Education Minister, Joseph Mungai. The majority of the country's 155,000 teachers, who comprise nearly 50 per cent of all government employees live in rural areas where access to condoms and anti-retroviral (ARV) drugs is limited.

The thousands of refugees expelled from Tanzania in 2002 are still stranded in southern Africa, afraid to return home to Rwanda and Burundi. The tripartite agreements signed with Uganda, Tanzania and Rwanda to repatriate the refugees to Rwanda and Burundi, instead ended with refugees fleeing East Africa altogether, their desperation shown by the fact that hundreds walked as far as Malawi, Zimbabwe and Namibia.

Turtles are endangered worldwide, but the five species of turtles found along the Tanzania coastline are now increasing in numbers. An intensive education and awareness programme has enlisted local fishermen and villagers in the conservation programme. Turtle nests are now protected and monitored in many parts of Tanzania. The longest and best documented programme is on Mafia Island, recognised as a regionally important nesting ground for Green and Hawksbill turtles.

Human rights activists have called on the Zanzibari police to adhere to professional ethics and respect human rights after the Tanzanian government deployed extra policemen to the semi-autonomous island on Monday. "We are asking the police to be careful in the execution of the operation," said Jilde Mambo, a legal adviser with the Zanzibar Legal Services Centre, a human rights NGO.