EDITORIAL: More needs to be done to improve rural life

Experience elsewhere has demonstrated that prudently investing in the rural areas is the way forward. In other words: investing in rural areas in good measure is more often than not a sure-fire path to success in achieving meaningful and sustainable socio-economic development that’s all-inclusive for the citizenry.

This is even more so when one takes into account the shocking depth, breadth and severity of abject poverty in rural areas – especially in the world’s least-developed countries (LDCs), including Tanzania, home to one of the world’s 25 poorest populations.

The seemingly endless ‘rustic poverty’ is ample testimony – if such testimony were still required – to the glaring mismatch between rural and urban dwellers in particular, and the country’s socio-economic development and poverty reduction across the board. If nothing else, this highlights the dire need to strategically invest in rural Tanzania, always giving top priority to investment areas that would promote broad-based, all-inclusive economic growth.

The underlying and overriding objective of doing this is to ensure national growth which includes marginalised and otherwise excluded groups as stakeholders in the country’s developmental processes that include investing heavily in basic social products and services. That’s one way of addressing extreme poverty in concerted efforts intended to effectively surmount the hydra-headed monster.

Indeed, there have been signs here and there of pro-poor growth within Tanzania’s economy in recent years.

A 2015 World Bank report titled ‘Tanzania Mainland Poverty Assessment: A New Picture of Growth for Tanzania Emerges’ noted that “the poor are seen to have benefited (albeit) disproportionately from economic growth during the period 2007/08–2011/12. This is in sharp contrast to the period 2001–07, during which what little economic growth there was mainly benefitted the country’s richer groups…”

Replicate Nakopi Village investment countrywide

The WB assessment also underscores the need for specific measures to develop the rural economy in general, and agriculture in particular. And, while at it, efforts must be put in diversifying livelihoods to include nonfarm businesses which would complement agricultural activities that help households to reduce poverty.

So, whichever way one looks at it, the econo-growth has not been enough to free Tanzania from extreme poverty. In the event, more still needs to be done. Hence, this call by The Citizen urging the government and its development partners, as well as prospective investors, to address the urban/rural inequality in social and economic development opportunities – doing so with a sense of urgency and better planning that is somehow biased in favour of pro-poor growth to begin with.

Indeed, we have seen the dramatic developments narrated in these pages today whereby direct, strategic investments in rural Mtwara Region have done wonders in a relatively short period of time.

Following appropriate investments in (solar) power generation in the Nakopi Village of Nanyumbu District, the villagers can now readily access affordable power and other appurtenances of the consumer culture, including electric lighting, refrigeration, small manufactories. The Nakopi Village model is the way forward, and should be replicated across the country, we say.