DEVELOPMENT-TANZANIA: Drought, Now Rains Disrupt Economy

By Moyiga Nduru Reprint | | Print |

Moyiga Nduru

DAR ES SALAAM, Feb 1 1998 (IPS) - Floods, cholera and the influx of refugees have combined to undermine Tanzania’s economy which is still reeling from the effects of the 1997 drought.

All sectors of the economy have been hit, and the government is still trying to estimate the overall damage caused by the floods attributed to the El Nino phenomenon.

“This year has been the worst. I have never seen anything like it in my lifetime,” said Mariott Kalanje, executive director of the Tanzania Chamber of Commerce, Industry and Agriculture (TCIA).

Kalanje told IPS Wednesday that the continuing floods have caused up to 30 percent loses or more of some agricultural crops. The hardest hit are cotton and coffee, Tanzania’s key export crops.

And, the floods have cut off most agricultural areas from the port of Dar es Salaam.

“I do not think we can achieve the target growth rate of five percent this year. It is doubtful,” Kalanje said, adding that the drought had already taken its toll.

“Some of our factories have been operating only three days a week, at about 20 percent of their capacities as a result of the power rationing caused by the drought,” Kalanje explained. “Then suddenly, without warning, we have the floods submerging hou ses, destroying thousands of hectares of crops and washing away bridges, as well as displacing thousands of people.”

President Benjamin Mkapa recently urged the Tanzanian population –estimated at 30 million — to help repair the infrastructure. Some members within the business community have been among the first to respond to the Tanzanian leader’s call.

“There are businessmen in affected districts who contributed a substantial amount of money, fuel, vehicles and equipment for the rehabilitation work,” Mkapa said, adding that he “appealed for a similar response from ordinary people and other businessm en throughout the country.”

But Kalanje thinks the damage caused by the floods is too extensive for Tanzanians to tackle alone. “I don’t think the government can sort out the mess without external support. I’m glad that the international community is now stepping in,” he said.

During a December consultative meeting between Tanzania and its development partners, a total of one billion U.S. Dollars was pledged to meet the country’s development needs in 1998. This was the first time the Consultative Group met in Tanzania. Previou s meetings have been held at the World Bank’s European Office in Paris.

Japan has already come up with its share of 5.72 billion Tanzanian Shillings (One U.S. Dollar is equivalent to 600 Shillings), part of it to finance food aid.

The Japanese ambassador to Tanzania, Shintaro Sasaki, said last week that the food aid comes at a time when there are substantive food shortages caused by last year’s drought and this year’s floods.

The drought placed nearly four million people on the brink of a severe food shortage, prompting the government to appeal to the international community in April 1997 for about 81.3 million U.S. Dollars to alleviate the situation.

Those living in the affected areas are already feeling the economic pinch of the floods. In Mwanza, on the border with Uganda, for example, the price of basic commodities have risen dramatically due to scarcity.

“For example, the price of 100 kg bag of the staple maize has gone up from 11,000 to 30,000 shillings. One kg of sugar has gone up to 900 shillings from 450 shillings,” Prince Roberts, a businessman from Mwanza told IPS.

Roberts said the cheapest food the population in Mwanza could afford was fish, “but fish has been banned by health authorities, because of the outbreak of cholera”.

Cholera has been reported in all the flood-affected countries in the region — Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda and Mozambique.

The European Union has banned fresh fish imports from Tanzania, Kenya and Mozambique because of the cholera epidemic.

Roberts also confirmed that the roads and rail linking Mwanza to Dar es Salaam, have been cut off by the floods. “As a result, I flew to Dar es Salaam in a cargo plane,” he said.

The abnormal rains also have affected refugee camps in the country. Tanzania hosts some 350,000 refugees from Burundi, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo, formerly Zaire.

Vincent Parker, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees’ representative in Tanzania told the media last week that the abnormal rainfall pattern has hindered access to all the refugee camps in the East African nation, and has affected sanitary c onditions within the camps.

Tanzania’s Meterology Department predicts that the heavy rains will continue until April.

“This is the phenomenon in developing countries. Either you have too much rain or nothing at all,” said Kalanje.

DEVELOPMENT-TANZANIA: Drought, Now Rains Disrupt Economy

By Moyiga Nduru Reprint | | Print |

Moyiga Nduru

DAR ES SALAAM, Feb 1 1998 (IPS) - Floods, cholera and the influx of refugees have combined to undermine Tanzania’s economy which is still reeling from the effects of the 1997 drought.
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