During his 50th Independence Anniversary of Tanganyika (now Mainland Tanzania), President Jakaya Kikwete urged citizens to acknowledge development made during the period.

To drive his point home, he compared the length of tarred roads of 1961 with that of 2011.
It is true that only Arusha-Moshi, Dar-Morogoro and Tanga-Korogwe roads were there 50 years ago. Today, we have many  thousands of kilometres  of tarmacked roads. We agree that the perception of the colonial rule on the country and its people was negative.

However, someone, probably his speechwriter, might have misled our leader into pursuing that line of argument by taking the length of tarred roads as an indicator of underdevelopment or exploitation during colonial era.

First, the number of vehicles plying the roads in 1961 in what is now Mainland Tanzania was probably between 20,000 and 30,000. Now we have 3-4 million: one hundred times more. Highways had little traffic and a good maintenance of earth roads or all-weather roads was enough to justify the use.  Such earth roads were fairly well maintained, year around.

Second, transport of goods and passengers was carried out by railways to some extent, which was at that time more efficient and active than today.   

A traffic policy after Uhuru has, in fact, emphasised the transportation of goods and passengers on roads rather than on railways and that has caused the need of improving the road network.

Third, the city centre had a minimum network of tarred roads; all others were earth roads but kept in good conditions year around.

Fourth, the money spent on tarmacking roads mainly comes from donors including Britain.
Before our Uhuru, Britain was using its own funds to develop Tanganyikan roads and other projects.  Sixth, the road development in Britain in 1961 was much less than today, both by total length of tarred roads and number of roads because there were fewer road users 50 years ago.

The road development in the UK since 1961 is less relevant than in Tanzania’s for the same period, because UK has developed its railway system in the meantime, while Tanzania has neglected it.

Lastly, some European countries, including Germany, Austria and Italy, opted for a huge road network after the Second World War in spite of having railways. Many years later, they admitted the mistake made but there is no way back.

More roads mean high air pollution, high fatalities from accidents, large dependence on fuel, agricultural land taken for road construction, petrol stations, parking areas, weighbridges and related facilities, high number of traffic police to deploy, electricity consumed to keep night light on hotspots like traffic junctions, costs of side roads and flyovers in villages crossed by high ways so not to mix local traffic and long distance one, roads users are more stressed out than railway passengers.

Stanley Mosha,
Moshi.

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