Poverty in Tanzania

As of 2012 only 1% of Tanzanian's in Dar es Salaam experience food poverty as compared to 11.3% of Tanzania's living in rural areas.

Endowments play a large part in distributing economic growth unevenly, with urban households having better access to infrastructure, health services, and education.

[4] Another main factor of rural poverty in Tanzania is the lack of infrastructure to provide energy to a huge part of the population.

Accountability is the problem in all these leadership levels as it is also pinpointed by Tim Kelsall, Siri Lange, Simeon Mesaki and Max Mmuya (June, 2005).

These policies focus poverty alleviation through building up national infrastructure, production capabilities, creating employment opportunities, increasing governmental accountability, and by improving upon quality of life metrics.

Despite this precious opportunity of stable peace, the economic condition failed to improve as compared to Rwanda, Mozambique, and Angola which have passed through civil wars for many years, but their economies are picking up.

To-date there is a 25 years Poverty Reduction Strategy (PRSP 2001 – 2025) parallel with Millennium Development Goals (MDGs – 2000 to 2015); now there is Kilimo Kwanza initiative.

The mentality of donor-led project is widespread from national to village level – there are several projects that could be accomplished by using locally available resources, for example potable water wells, small irrigation schemes, health structures, school building et cetera, but they have remained unimplemented awaiting for external donor assistance.

During the early 1990s, International Financial Institutions (including International Monetary Fund advised Tanzania to do retrenchment and stop employment even in the key sectors, such as education, health and agriculture as a precondition for financial assistance; as a result the economy paralyzed, and now it has a long walk towards achieving socio-economic improvement.

Serious conflicts were observed in Zanzibar (which is part of Tanzania), after 1995, 2000, and 2005 general elections in which Chama cha Mapinduzi (CCM) defeated Civic United Front (CUF).

There is a tendency of politicians to spend billions of money (mostly for bribing poor people in exchange for votes) during general election period in order to either get or maintain their leadership positions; but on the other hand, little effort is made towards poverty alleviation initiatives in the communities.