It’s time to put an end to the Dodoma experiment

It’s time to put an end to the Dodoma experiment

In the past 100 years, many countries have moved their capitals. From Australia to Brazil, and from Kazakhstan to Tanzania, many countries have found reasons to embark on capital-moving projects.

Moving a capital is one of the most daunting projects that any country can undertake. Enormous amounts of cash are usually sunk into such projects, and there is no telling when those projects will stop sucking in money. These are decisions which, if left at the whims of political demagogues, can lead to devastating consequences.

However, the billion-dollar question is: why do capitals move? There are as many answers as the number of capitals that have been moved. Take Nigeria, for example, where its capital was moved from Lagos to Abuja in 1991.

Lagos, Africa’s most populous city, is in the south of Nigeria, which is generally divided into mainly the Christian south and Muslim north. Following the political, economic, ethnic, and religious conflicts which culminated in the Biafran War, the government attempted to integrate the nation by moving the capital to a more neutral and central location, Abuja. In other words, the new capital was a nation-building project to bridge the existing divisions in the country.

Similarly, every capital that moved has its own background story. But the moving of capitals is usually facilitated by authoritarian leaders who can allocate vast national resources without having to answer questions. This is partly the story of Kazakhstan’s capital as it moved from the Soviet-era city of Almaty to the new city of Astana under Nursultan Nazarbayev.

Designed by the Japanese architect Kisho Kurakawa, Astana, now conveniently renamed Nur-Sultan after the former president, is one of the most modern cities in central Asia, dotted with a range of futuristic buildings and skyscrapers. Since it became the capital in 1997, Astana has witnessed dramatic economic growth, with the regional GDP increasing 90 times.

However, the adage that ‘if you build it, they will come’ doesn’t usually work with new capitals. Enough of these projects have failed, leading to a general sentiment that moving capitals is usually a bad idea. And probably no example is more infamous than Myanmar’s Naypyidaw.

In 2005, Myanmar’s military rulers decided to move the country’s capital from Yangon to the newly built city of Naypyidaw. The Naypyidaw project was not a joke – the city cost about $4 billion to build from scratch, and it is massive – about four times the size of London!

Naypyidaw boasts 20-lane highways, but which are generally empty because many people, businesses and embassies have decided to remain in Yangon, leaving Naypyidaw with a ghost-like feeling, thus earning it its ‘world’s most bizarre city’ reputation, where some people have even ventured into using its empty highways for playing sports!

However, despite the huge budget, no justification was given for incurring such an expense. Some analysts have cited possible security concerns, but it is generally mentioned that the capital was moved because the country’s astrologers advised so!

In South America, Brazilians were a bit sounder in the 1950s.

Then and now, Brazil has a serious challenge with its population distribution. Eighty percent of the population lives within 250km of Brazil’s Atlantic coast, leaving the Amazon in the north and the vast tropical savannah in the middle virtually empty. Many of these people live in the south-eastern region, especially around the cities of Sao Paolo, Rio de Janeiro and Belo Horizonte, but many of these coastal cities are in small pockets of lands surrounded by steep cliffs, thus limiting their growth. Therefore, seeking to integrate the country’s interior economically, and to address the geographic limitations of the coastal cities, the Brasilia solution was proposed.

Today, Brasilia is one of Brazil’s biggest cities with a population of over 4 million people. The city has a unique modernistic design which has won it UNESCO’s World Heritage Site status. Moreover, Brasilia’s has the highest GDP per capita in Latin America, ahead of many far popular cities.

Prof Vadim Rossman, the author of the book Capital Cities: Varieties and Patterns of Development and Relocation observes that the best reason to move a capital is to bring ‘balance and inclusivity’, rather than making a city ‘flash and glamorous’. And this is where I have a problem with the Dodoma project. Of all things that Tanzania can do to improve the development of its people, does sinking billions of dollars into the Dodoma project feature in its top ten list?

Four decades since two thirds of TANU representatives voted to move the capital to Dodoma, with the world and Tanzania completely changed, who would have thought that a day would come when someone would actually do what has been done in Dodoma? One can never underestimate African leaders’ need for financial and economic pragmatism.

Let’s ask: who remembers hearing a national leader articulating why the Dodoma project is a good idea? The whole thing proceeded in eerie silence – everyone assumes that someone else knows better. Is it possible that the emperor is naked?

In my opinion, Dodoma can only be termed a vanity project, and I think it is time Tanzania put this wasteful experiment to rest for good. Next week, I will highlight how Tanzania, and indeed the residents of Dodoma, can do better through alternative paths.