Tanzania In Transition

This paper is inspired by the two articles “Oman’s Diverse Society: Northern Oman” by J.E. Peterson and the second chapter of the book “Tanzania in Transition” by Kjell Havnevik. We live in a world where “the wealth of the one percent richest people in the world amounts to $110 trillion. That’s 65 times the total wealth of the bottom half of the world’s population” (Shin, 2014, para 2). Poverty is defined as the lack of basic human needs; and Africa is known to be the poorest continent, in which Tanzania is one of the poorest countries in that continent. According to statistics Tanzania has 30 to 40 percent poverty, and one of main issues that cause this poverty is that the rich exploit the poor for personal gain, and the lack of education in the community. This problem has been there even before Tanzania transitioned from a colony to an independent country. Even though, Tanzania is improving in terms of reducing poverty it remains one of the world’s poorest country. Many people including the father of Tanzania “Julius Kambarage Nyerere” tried to solve the issue of poverty in Tanzania by implementing policies to help the economy, but they failed. The inability to solve this problem causes the community to suffer from many diseases, poor living conditions, unsafe working environment, and alcohol and substance abuse.

This solution is perfect for Tanzania because the rich can invest on the companies that are made by the foreign countries and the poor can work in it, even the government itself would benefit too, because they will create allies that would be beneficial in the future. It is fair to everyone because the rich would get richer and the poor would be able to find jobs. Most of Africa’s countries would benefit by implementing this strategy, Africa being the poorest continent, if every country manages to find good foreign investors the world will be a better place with a huge reduction of poverty and a huge increase in prosperity. Some might argue that a good solution to the issue of poverty is the use of socialism. Socialism is an economic and political system where the government has public or collective ownership of the means of production; individuals in this system depend on the state for everything from food to health care. Those people would argue that through hard taxation and distribution of property to spread social, economic, medical and political equality. Others might argue that Capitalism is a great solution; Capitalism is defined by Encyclopedia Britannica

One of the main reasons socialism failed is because of the mentality of the community and the high percentage of illiteracy in which most of the community couldn 't read or understand Nyerere 's policies. According to this situation it 's obvious that the main aim of the government is the eradication of illiteracy. To be able to do so it’s apparent the government doesn 't have the means and the resources to educate its people, however the help of an external power will decrease illiteracy greatly which as well will end up reducing poverty in the country for thus countries help in educating they can get the privilege of investing in this country by building factories which will supply the community with jobs. So it’s a mutually beneficial situation for both