Regardless of academic attainment, our college graduates are crying out for startups for university graduates in Tanzania. Still, our avaricious politicians are mocking them, saying they all need to embark on perpetual education! Well, this obscures what is wrong with Tanzanian leadership, which is infamous for narcissism. The Tanzanian leader has overpaid himself and is accountable only to his belly. In fact the Tanzanian leader, notwithstanding whether he is a politician or a bureaucrat, steals and loots public resources through harsh and unconscionable laws.
He has jettisoned the salary tapering system, and now he pays himself over 10,000 times more than the lowest-ranking government official. It wasn’t like that during the Nyerere era, when the president received Tshs 5 000/= per month, and the lowest-paid civil servant collected Tshs 380/= per month. That was a 13.15-times wage ratio between the highest-paid public servant and the lowest one.
Today, nobody in the government worth his name has the guts to tell us how much the president, an MP, or a judge earns because whatever they take home is scandalous to a nation purporting to build an egalitarian society. This article digs deep into why we need frugal leaders if we have to stand to get our youth into sustainable and living employment. Our greedy politicians are misleading the nation that our tertiary graduates should consume a lifetime of vocational training. Well, this article repudiates this deception in the strongest terms.
Well, our graduates don’t need more of the same because they have been overtrained already where they are now. And all they need is a capital injection from the Treasury to begin to solve global problems. What is keeping them down is a leadership that allocates most of the recurrent budget to itself, and servicing interest payments for the loans we hardly need. We should all, in one accord, rebuke and chastise a political leadership that is good for nothing beyond filling their own bellies.
We have a prime minister who is devoid of creativity and imagination. For all the years he has been hibernating in that position he has done nothing worthwhile beyond maintenance of the quaking status quo. Now, he has come to insult our collective intelligence when he urged university graduates to join VETA and develop vocational skills! To put it mildly, he seems out of touch and of his intellectual ropes.
First, he fails to grasp the major differences between tertiary education and vocational training. This is regrettable when you consider that before he stumbled into politics, he was a career teacher! If vocational training trumps tertiary education, the question he needs to answer is why we are razing trillions to fund tertiary education if, after all, it is just another boondoggle.
What will telling a fresh university engineering graduate to join vocational training lead to? Is he going to work as an artisan or a mason? Is he going to weld or mould metals in a template? Besides, most VETA graduates are unemployed or underemployed. So, when the prime minister says that after completing VETA, these university graduates will be in a better position to choose between self-employment and getting hired, it is a distraction from the real issues.
What the premier doesn’t want us to cogitate about is the leadership that he chaperones, which will be remembered for narcissism but nothing else. Most of the salary hikes during his tenure have benefited those at the very top with new employment and improvement of wages of those at the basement always being procrastinated. We have a government that is insensitive to the plight of the poor. They are always dreaming up how to take a huge cut of the national cake to themselves while urging others to tighten the belt and cough out more taxes.
We have a government that recklessly borrows, and that bootleg ends up in the pockets of politicians and their supporting cast – the bureaucrats. There is nothing it does better than to create government jobs for spouses of national leaders who contribute nothing tangible. These spouses now earn billions over time while our graduates cannot find the respite. We have regional administrators who drive fancy SUVs and bleed the government white while facing no consequences because they are election thieves! They are being handsomely rewarded for disenfranchising the electorate. No wonder the V8 are coming right before the election!
But what does it take to put our tertiary graduates to work? Most of them don’t need handouts in the form of government jobs, which they know are now reserved for the offspring of those already in the government. Nepotism is now the hallmark of this government—even President Samia Suluhu Hassan has attested to it!
“….wanasiasa watoto wao watakuwa wanasiasa na maaskari watoto wao watakuwa maaskari…”
Somewhere else she condoned looting of public resources, and this is what she had said:
“….mnakula kupita kipimo…hata kama mnakula mle kulingana na mipaka ya kamba zenu…”
And when it comes to arming peasants with tractors this is what she said:
“….kuna wengine wanasema eti tuwanunulie wakulima matrekta badala ya kuwanunulia wakuu wa mikoa magari…wakuu wa mikoa wanahitaji magari waende kusimamia kazi vijijini…..”
What she fails to comprehend is that peasants don’t need regional commissioners to supervise them since they have agricultural experts at village level. What they need is mechanization of the means of production and output, not excluding access to markets for their agricultural produce. Regional Commissioners are parasites they least need.
Again, we still have to address what is needed to address massive unemployment among our tertiary graduates. What we need is to invest in startups. There are many cases already seen in the world where startups have not only created decent employment but have also fanned new ideas and innovation. Israel has shown what a mere $ 50,000 per group of 5 graduates can do. The detailed examples of what the Israeli government has achieved through startups deserve a separate discussion.
For next year’s budget, we need to set aside Tshs 1 trillion to support startups. This government debases itself when it lends money to entertainers who are consumers but not creators of wealth. Once Tshs 40 mill is doled out to a bongo movie, it is spent on personal effects like building a home, clearing debts, getting busier in romancing some stones, and buying fancy used cars. There is no “multiplier effect” from empowering Bongo movies and his ilk beyond solving their personal cash problems, and because the money is not directed to production, most of the loans dished out to our local entertainers will never be repaid. It is throwing money into a pit latrine and that makes the government appear dumb and captured by vested yet competing interests.
Our politicians lack legitimacy to govern and this is why they buy loyalty everywhere they can. Most presidential and non-presidential hires are repurposed to reward cronyism rather than meritocracy. It narrates why sustaining the past modus operandi brazenly preoccupies this government. It lacks imagination and creativity. As a result, it sticks to past practices which have miserably failed. I wonder why this government is too lazy to think out of the box. Why keep playing an old tune again and again and not get fatigued?
All governments are racing to win the AI race, but our government is busier purchasing new presidential planes instead of investing in the access of the new technologies. Which is more rewarding, buying a president a luxurious jet or launching at least 100 Internet satellites the size of Starlink? Each of such satellite prices is around $250-500 K. Total cost will be around $ 25 – 50 mill. When other appurtenances are added into the equation, overall costs of launching 100 Starlink types of satellites will be around $250 – 500 million. One hundred such satellite will not only cover Tanzania but the whole of East Africa. What a squandered financial opportunity!
Paradoxically, that is the cost of getting a V8 SUV for all senior government officials! Unemployment in Tanzania is a preferred choice of the CCM government. Let us not mince words over this crucial fact. They only care about maintaining their potbellies. When you hear a leader is answering a question you never asked, you need to ask yourself why? It is the signature of a compulsive liar.
Why does Tanzanian leadership always claim to love us while everything they do shows they hate us? To stand a chance to win the AI race, we need to claim ownership of internet satellites and hand them over to the TTCL, who can charge about Tshs 12,000/= per 200 GB per month. The current internet pricing regime benefits internet providers and local politicians who own some dubious shares but comes at a high cost to local employment. Until we own the internet narratives and slash the costs of digital access, we will never be able to solve a myriad of challenges facing our youth today.
Startups can also encourage competition to claim the funds. Those with project ideas that hold great promise may be selected in a transparent and competitive way. The Commission of Science and Technology may be given the Tshs 1 trillion specifically to reward ideas that hold great promise. The commission may have to set up a website and an app that is accessible to all Tanzanians. Those with great ideas may upload their videos on that website and everybody may vote for which project idea deserves funding. The amount of funds will be not more than $50,000 per project. Winners must prove their citizenship and funds should be paid as soon as the voting ends. Whoever tops the votes wins the innovation contest. We need at least 1000 new startups annually to have an impact, considering that at least 20% of those approved projects will flounder.
There are many ideas that even the unemployed teachers have been recommending. Some of those ideas make a lot of sense. They intone that if they are given loans to build schools, they can easily repay those loans. They lack ideas and a government that empathizes with their challenges. If you ponder what they are agitating for, it makes a lot of sense. Why give Tshs 40 million or more to one local entertainer when you have unemployed teachers who can do much development work with that kind of cash? The staggering “multiplier effect” of loaning teachers compared with the local entertainers only excels in confirming our worst fears: This government is insular and out of touch with reality.
They can form a group of ten teachers or more, and pooling their loans together will lead to Tshs 400 million or more, enough to put up a very good secondary school. Forget the billions that the local governments burn to build schools. It is always a rip-off. Most of the cash services’ official graft and shoddy works never justify the colossal sums we are bombarded with daily. This government loves to brag about huge project costs but never addresses the value of money. The rate of return of government projects was never in their vocabulary.
Giving loans to unemployed teachers in a competitive and transparent process to build private schools will terminate the splurge we are now seeing: Wasteful expenditure of government funds in the hands of unaccountable bureaucrats. In fact, it is now high time the government washes its hands in school buildings and lets the unemployed teachers assume that onerous task. We will save a lot of construction funds while improving the quality of the buildings and the education.
As I have said before, there is a direct correlation between unemployment and lack of legitimacy to govern, sadly of the CCM government. Most government revenues are squandered in a manner that will not ensure the long-term sustainability of a nation but winning the next election, at whatever costs. That cost may also include condemning this nation into civil unrest and endless wars, as history teaches us income disparities are the root causes of domestic unrest and social uprisings.
We have seen enough of mediocrity, and now we deserve better. Therefore, in the next government, we should demand a new Premier who will bring fresh ideas that will put the lights off of the past cultures and practices of thinking through the nose. No more apportioning the national cake to politicians who binge but produce barely anything. We must begin investing in the unemployed youth who will spearhead the nation’s development. Politicians are parasites, and when they reward nepotism, they make their supporting cast even more incompetent.
If I have to jot down on the back of a stamp what the unemployed youth need in Kiswahili, this is what I will shout out aloud with the voice of an Archangel:
“….Wasomi wa vyuo vikuu hawahitaji VETA bali mitaji ya startups. Hii hela ipo ila inaliwa na viongozi kupitia mishahara yao, mafao ya kustaafu, ufisadi wao, utendaji duni, posho lukuki, matibabu n’gambo, n.k Kujirekebisha kunahitaji viongozi wafunge mkanda waache ubinafsi… vinginevyo tutafute viongozi wapya watakaomudu mahitaji ya sasa.”
Read more analysis by Rutashubanyuma Nestory
I just Hope this won’t lead to foreign Corporations To Find Something To fund On, we should Read a book called Economic Hitmen.Do we need this Again? Money for startups,! They come with interest Rates, and we both know that money won’t reach those who truly need it.