Skip to main content

Magufuli Tells Mbeki, Obasanjo, Mkapa Why Africa Is Poor


Staff Writer, DAR ES SALAAM

President of the United Republic of Tanzania and SADC Chairman, Dkt. John Pombe Magufuli has reminded African Statesmen why the Continent remains poor amidst vast richness of natural resources.

He cited lack of innovation, industrial technology and misinterpretation of developmental foundations to be two main causatives of resources mismanagement leading to poverty in the African continent.

Addressing the 6th  African Leadership Forum held on Thursday at the State House in Dar es salaam, President Magufuli said the misinterpretation development foundations have made many African leaders to travel in developed countries to seek loans and aids instead of investing on how to manage the African resources.

President Mafuguli stressed on the importance of managing African resources by citing the late Father of the Nation in Tanzania, Mwalimu Nyerere who believed on four things to achieve African development: People, land, good politics and leadership.

“The former colonial masters are not our uncles. They will never unleash full good will to facilitate our development. We must do it on our own ways,” he told a gathering of experts and the former leaders.   

President Magufuli with former Presidents Mkapa and Obasanjo
President Magufuli has also said that lack of innovation and industrial technology to produce goods that will generate employment opportunities, internal conflicts triggered by imperialists to continue dominating and siphoning the African resources and African leaders who sign bogus contracts with investors have, are other major obstacles to African development.

He cited other causatives of African underdevelopment to be lack of patriotism among African leaders and political parties leading to being turned into agents of capitalism leading to conflicts in their own countries and distraction of natural resources and environment.

He used the occasion to stress that his government has already started to implement austerity measures to managing well national resources, abolishing corruption in public sectors, reviewing bogus exploitative mining contracts, investing on industrial development and innovation and managing natural resources for further development of Tanzania.

He cited the construction of mega projects like the 2,115 megawatts Julius Nyerere Hydro Power project which is financed by taxpayers’ money at the cost of tsh 6.5 trillion ($ 3 billion) expected to be completed by 2022. 

The Forum is attended by Tanzania’s former Presidents: William Benjamin Mkapa, Jakaya Kikwete; Nigeria’s General Olusegun Obasanjo; South African Former President Thabo Mbeki; Somalia former President Hassan Mohamed, Madagascar’s former President Hery Rajaonarima and other high level experts.               


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

AFRICA'S TOP 5 "UNAFRICAN" PRESIDENTS OF THE YEAR 2018

"Botswana's impressive performance, Tanzania's great strides, Ethiopian reforms leaves the mark" says our online readers.  By Africa 54 Magazine, Accra, Ghana, 31 Dec, 2018 As we end the year 2018 and welcome the incredible 2019, our online magazine readers were asked to simply comment: who is your best African President for the year 2018- a leader who is not common to have one in Africa "UnAfrican" because of his/her incredible performance, leadership, focus, courage and great result.                                              And these are the results for 2018... #1 IAN KHAMA-Botswana: Always cool in leading the small country into tremendous social and economic transfomations including quality infrastructure, access to social services and j...
17 comments
Read more

Tanzania's Most Peaceful Election: Why Opposition Got Flabbergasted?

 By John Njoroge:  The ruling party and President John Pombe Magufuli are both leading by far (update: final results are now out, see an update note at the end of the article), trailing the weak opposition in Tanzania following the 28th October General elections.              President John Pombe Magufuli of Tanzania As usual, as the results were pouring out, the oppostion parties, activists and western propaganda machination, all over, resorted to one simple phallacy; whether the election was free and fair. Actually I heard the opposition rejecting the results on the basis of some irregularities.  Let me address that first before I share what I believe to be the reasons for weaker oppostion this time around in Tanzania.  The term free and fair has no one meaning in electoral governance across the world; countries abhor diverse socio-political systems and so is how they manage their elections. The fact that all political parties too...
1 comment
Read more

The Good, the Bad and the Worse in Africa's Anti Corona Crusades; Lessons from Tanzania

By John Njoroge, Africa54, SA.  The anti Covid-19 crusade(s) in Africa is yet again bringing into perspective diverse leadership from the Continent that is known for its strong immunity after countless years fighting known and unknown diseases. It worths our while to put Covid-19 into scrutiny. Globally, as positive cases hit the 1 million mark this week, countries in Africa are on the front fighting the Corona malade from different viewpoints and strategies. The 54 countries Continent has a merely 9,000 plus positive Corona cases and not more than 500 deaths (compare with 78,000 deaths world wide).  It will be up to scholars to empirically verify and confirm which are the best strategies to handle Corona globally and in Africa, but we are already able to see the good, the bad and the worse in our Continent.  Two major schools of thought are emerging; the anxity model and the elasticity model. Whereas the former focuses on a panic than a culculated f...
6 comments
Read more