EDITORIAL: Kuddos to Prof swai, let girls take the challenge

Tanzanian scholar Hulda Swai has made the country and Africa in general proud with her excelling in science after being declared the winner of a prestigious scientific award in the continent.

The award has been given since 2008 by the African Union (AU) Commission as part of its drive to promote science, technology and innovation.

The professor of life science and bioengineering was declared the 2020 winner of AU Kwame Nkrumah Continental Awards for Scientific Excellence.

It is no doubt that Prof Swai will be an inspirational to the women folk, particularly girl students, to take up science subjects, which they normally perceive as a males-only area.

We need to support women in science and technology subjects from early age that anything is achievable under the sun and that they should not lose hope of excelling in science and other areas.

All need to understand that money should not always be the goal, but excellence of what they do as being useful to humanity.

For the likes of Prof Swai to excel in science, the government, in cooperation with the stakeholders of education, should introduce awards at the national level and give them to those performing well in science. The time has come for the girl students not to be afraid of taking up science subjects, which, if performing well, will make them earn a name for themselves and contribute to the welfare of humanity in general.

It is also time for the Ministry of Education and the education stakeholders visited schools across the country and encourage the girl students to study science.

We need to have more Swais in Tanzania, who will be serving their country in different fields as that will also help to develop a crop of local experts across all professions.

We commend Prof Swai for her achievements and wish her all the best in the coming years of more service to humanity.

Tackle issues in mining sector

The mining sector is still passing through sort of transformation period since the government overhauled the laws governing the sector in 2017.

Companies are coping with the new environment in which the government wants to assure a win-win situation for both the investors on one side and the government and its people on the other.

As one of the giant mining firms commends the current trend and good progress of the partnership, the small-scale miners voiced their concerns that they think should be immediately addressed.

These include numerous taxes, inaccessibility to loans, failure of mineral buyers to abide by the government’s indicative price, ban in exportation of raw minerals, too high research costs to afford, high costs of license and lack of advanced technology for mining activities.

Well, there are things which the government can do to sort the challenges but other solutions may only be found through dialogues and partnerships.

The government may quickly fix issues like taxes and laws related to exportation of minerals but the private sector needs to provide close cooperation, including transparency of their dealings.

The private sector needs to also come out with convincing proposals for the government to take actions.

All in all, cooperation between the two sides is very important.