By Arnaud Bebien
DAR ES SALAAM, May 27 2011 (IPS)

The Indian prime minister, Dr Manmohan Singh, concludes a three-day visit to Tanzania on May 28. Singh arrived in Dar es Salaam from the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, where he took part in the Second India-Africa Forum Summit, which began on May 20.

The Tanzanian leg of his overseas trip has reinforced already close cooperation between the two countries, and comes at an opportune moment for the Tanzanian government in its search for foreign investment.

Tanzania and India have long historical links. The first bilateral cooperation agreements between the two countries date back to January 1966, just two years after the official birth of Tanzania from the union of Tanganyika and Zanzibar in 1964. (Zanzibar is an island off the coast in the Indian Ocean.)

The total value of trade between India and Africa stood at 31 billion dollars in 2009-2010; trade between Tanzania and India exceeded a billion dollars that same year. India is Tanzania’s leading source of imports (900 million dollars in 2010) and the second largest investor, after Kenya, according to the economic desk at the Indian embassy in Tanzania.

India’s involvement with Tanzania can be explained first of all by the large Indian Diaspora which in this East African country. The first Indians arrived here more than 90 years ago, shortly after the First World War, when the League of Nations designated the territory as a protectorate under British control. At independence in 1961, a large number of Indians remained in the country and today occupy an important place in the country’s economy.

According to figures provided by the Indian embassy in Dar es Salaam, the economic capital, there are 40,000 Tanzanians of Indian origin, and an additional 8,000 expatriate Indians. The Indian community lives mostly in the country’s major cities, where they are involved in commercial enterprises and industry.

At the first India-Africa summit held in New Delhi in 2008, India and Tanzania agreed on cooperation in two key areas, food security and health. In line with this, a first batch of 288 tractors arrived from India in October 2010, to help Tanzanian farmers achieve better yields.

“Four hundred others, of an eventual total of 1,700, will arrive soon,” the Indian ambassador to Tanzania, Kocheril Bhagirath, told journalists this week, stressing that the country will continue to support Tanzanian agriculture.

For 45 years, Tanzania has benefitted from Indian expertise in numerous domains. “The partnership is very dynamic,” says the Tanzania-India Friendship Association, headed by the former Tanzanian prime minister Salim Ahmed Salim. “India has helped us to realise some of the millennium development goals, particularly in the health sector.”

A new hospital is to be constructed in Dar es Salaam in 2013, which will be co-managed by the Tanzanian government and a private Indian firm. It will offer specialist treatment that is not currently available in the country, with patients forced to seek treatment overseas.

In 2010, day-patient units for treating cardio-vascular complaints were established in two clinics in Dar. The city’s Lions Club – financed by diasporic Africans – has also sent 2,000 Tanzanian children suffering from serious cardiac problems for treatment in India, according to the Indian embassy.

Even before that, in 1996, Tanzania’s first private university, the International Medical and Technological University, opened in Dar es Salaam, a project supported by the Bangalore-based Vignan Educational Foundation.

Also expected to be raised during the Indian prime minister’s visit is the struggle against terrorism and Somali piracy. Piracy has disrupted maritime trade in the Indian Ocean that both countries depend on and the possibility of cooperation between the naval forces of the two countries was to be discussed, according to reports.

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By Arnaud Bebien
MWANZA, Tanzania, Aug 30 2010 (IPS)

Coordinated conservation measures to arrest the steep decline of stocks of Nile perch in Lake Victoria are showing encouraging results – for fish, if not for fishing communities around the lake.

Overfishing on Lake Victoria has diminished stocks of a valuable alien species, the Nile perch. Credit: Arnaud Bébien/IPS

Paul Johaiven is one of the fishermen. Like many of the others, the 25-year-old got no further than primary school. For want of alternatives, he turned to the lake to earn a living.

The Nile perch was introduced to the lake in the 1950s while Tanzania was still a British colony. It proved a catastrophe for other species in the lake, as this aggressive predator – which can grow as long as 2 metres, and weigh up to 200 kilos – fed on native species, pushing hundreds of native species to the edge of extinction.

But the fish have also brought substantial incomes to thousands in fishing communities around the lake.

Around 200,000 tonnes of perch are exported overseas every year, bringing in nearly 250 million dollars a year to the three countries on the lake: Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania.

But the fairy tale is over, says Johaiven. “I spend more and more time on the water, and now i have to fish partly at night. Yet I get less and less fish,” he told IPS.

Geofrey Rubanza says, “Not long ago, we caught lots more fish. Now, we have to go further from the shore, and cast our nets a thousand times and still sometimes we come back with nothing. There are too many people fishing on the lake, and therefore less fish.”

Statistics published by the Lake Victoria Fisheries Organization (LVFO) confirm his observation. Where fishing boats each typically brought in 300 kilos of fish from the lake every day in 2005, in 2008, the average daily catch fell to just 80 kilos in 2008, according to the LVFO.

The average size of the fish caught is also shrinking: from an average of 50 centimetres long before 2007, perch pulled from the lake are typically no longer than 25 cm today.

The number of people fishing the lake jumped from around 56,000 in 2000 to 98,000 in 2006; the number of fishing craft doubled to 30,000 in the same period, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization.

The FAO estimates that stocks of Nile Perch fell by a startling 80 percent between 1998 and 2008.

But several years of enforcement of conservation policies jointly implemented by the three countries sharing the lake are beginning to show positive results.

Authorities in all three countries have cracked down on excessive fishing and inappropriate fishing methods including the use of net mesh sizes that catch juvenile fish, thus jeopardising reproduction of stocks. Fishing without a licence is also being curtailed.

And following a mid-July meeting in Kampala, further measures will be introduced. For example, fishing crews will soon have to pay rent on the section of the beach that they operate from; the intent is to reduce the total numbers of boats going out onto the water.

The very latest figures released by the LVFO indicate positive results, with a growth in the number of fish. The organisation shows stocks rebounding from a low of 340,000 tonnes in 2008 to 400,000 today.

This is still far from the 750,000 tonnes recorded as recently as 2005, but in light of the steep crash in stocks, the reversal is promising, says John Magufuli, the minister of fisheries for Tanzania.

“Zero tolerance is applied in Kenya and Tanzania against excessive fishing and inappropriate fishing methods, especially the size of the mesh. I am convinced that in the next six months, stocks will continue to grow.”

But as the resource recovers, another problem is on the horizon for the communities whose livelihoods depend on exports of Nile perch: rapidly growing aquaculture of cod in several European countries, which reduces demand for exports of the Lake Victoria fish. The LVFO reports that total exports fell by 40 percent between 1999 and 2009.

Nile perch from East Africa first gained a foothold in European markets due to shortages of cod in the 1990s, but Belgium, the United Kingdom and Norway are all presently enjoying great success in farming cod.

“We too have to become good at aquaculture,” say Wilson Mwanja, the Ugandan commissioner for fisheries. “The stocks of Nile perch are shrinking for lack of good management.”

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By Arnaud Bebien
DAR-ES-SALAAM, Mar 10 2010 (IPS)

Pregnancy is the leading cause of dropouts for school girls in Tanzania. And a national law forbidding young mothers to return to school after giving birth did not make it any easier for them to continue their education.

But thanks to pressure from the United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF), the Tanzania government has now adopted a new law that allows young mothers to continue their education at their former schools.

Before the revision of the law, some girls studied at vocational centres which made it easier to return to school.

Centres exist throughout the country and depend on the ministry of education. The training is funded thanks to family support: the girls learn a trade (such as hairdressing or dressmaking) or take refresher courses in the evening.

Bethsheba, 18, takes classes at Temeke Centre, but lives with her aunt. Mother of little Thabit, she fell pregnant with the child of her friend and neighbour in 2006.

“He told me loved me. Since I was waiting for the results of last year exam I thought it was a good time to have a relationship,” she told IPS. Currently, Bethsheba is taking refresher courses at the centre, and hopes to be able to return to secondary school soon.

However, despite the best intentions, the return to school is difficult, especially without family support. Catherine, 16, became pregnant during high school. “I was in 3rd year when I was forced to drop out because I got pregnant,” she recalls. “I want to go to the vocational centre, but it’s difficult because I have nobody at home to watch my daughter.”

Early pregnancy is not a new problem in Tanzania and has often sparked national debate.

On Feb. 10 during a National Assembly session, an official from the opposition ‘Civic United Front’, challenged the deputy minister of education, Mwantumu Mahiza, to explain the measures taken by the government to reduce the number of girls falling pregnant at school.

Mahiza said that his ministry is preparing new laws and policies to address the issue, adding that six percent of girls leave school each year due to pregnancy. Twenty-five percent of Tanzanian women under 18 are already mothers.

According to ministry of education statistics, 28,600 girls left school between 2004 and 2008 because they were pregnant. At secondary level the figures are alarming: in 2007 one in five girls fell pregnant and did not finish school.

One of the main reasons for the large number of pregnant girls is that many have unprotected sex and lack access to contraceptives. Moreover, there is the social context. For example, in the Shinyanga region (western Tanzania), parents threaten to throw their daughters out of their homes if they attend high school.

Many ask their daughters to fail their studies so they can marry as soon as possible. In some remote areas of the country, children as young as 11 are pregnant. Some blame the Marriage Act of 1971, which legalised marriage between a man and a 14-year-old-girl. For some parents the dowry they receive when marrying their daughter is a significant source of income.

Moreover, in this population that is 80 percent rural, low-income parents often do not have the means to send their children to secondary school. When they finish primary school at 13 or 14, girls stay home in the village and fall pregnant.

“A number of parents don’t take their children’s education seriously,” says a reproachful ministry of education.

Nevertheless, the issue is taken very seriously by officials as the majority of these teenagers face challenges for which they are unprepared. The Beninese singer and UNICEF ambassador, Angélique Kidjo, visited Tanzania in January to raise awareness on this issue.

“It makes me sad to see these young girls because being mother at 16 is not easy,” she said in Dar es Salaam during a meeting with young mothers.

Thanks to pressure from UNICEF the Tanzanian government adopted the new law in January 2010 which allows young mothers back into their old schools. This was strictly forbidden before now. But UNICEF recognises that all is not won, some schools still do not accept girls returning after childbirth as they are unaware of the new law.

In addition to the risk of contracting HIV during sex, these girls also face the risk of complications during birth. In Tanzania, three-quarters of births take place at home without proper care and treatment.

Angelina, 16, was pregnant when she dropped out of her grade school in Dar es Salaam. Her baby was born premature with heart problems. She spent four months in hospital, but she is studying at a centre similar to Temeke. Her story has a rare positive outcome in a country were young mothers just like her are less fortunate.

As for the child’s father, a bus driver, he disappeared without a trace. Abandonment is a frequent occurrence for these girls. Many are too young to be mothers and are left stranded by their baby’s fathers with no means of supporting themselves.

Sometimes parents help their daughters when they can, but some do not hesitate to kick them out of their homes. As a consequence: many young girls with very small children sell fruit and vegetables by the roadside, forced to fend for themselves.

(FIN/IPS/AF/EA/ED/HD/DV/WO/GR/SX/MD/AB/AIT/10)

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