News — tanzania

Tanzanian President John Pombe Magufuli has died at the age of 61, the country’s vice-president said. He died on Wednesday from heart complications at a hospital in Dar es Salaam, Samia Suluhu Hassan disclosed this in a televised address to the nation late on Wednesday.

The BBC reported last Wednesday that Magufuli has not made a public appearance in some time, prompting Tanzanians to ask for the whereabouts of their president. The opposition leader, Tundu Lissu, said the president was on admission in a hospital due to COVID-19. This is yet to be confirmed. Lissu said that Magufuli was flown to Kenya last Monday but rather quietly. He added that Magufuli may have suffered a cardiac arrest in his illness.

Last year, the Covid-19 skeptic leader declared a “victory” of the pandemic over what he said were the prayers of Tanzanians. Magufuli’s administration had declared that the country was coronavirus-free. This came after the government insisted normal public life would have to go on in spite of the suspected increase in cases leading up to the end of last year. Schools remained open as did churches.

“The corona disease has been eliminated thanks to God,” Magufuli once stated in a speech, apparently because of prayers. The spiritual inclination was not a joke as the government warned the American Embassy in Dar-es-Salaam to stay out of Tanzania’s internal affairs after the American envoy issued a statement in May 2020 claiming that hospitals in the commercial capital were on the verge of collapse due to admitting coronavirus-infected patients.

Magufuli did not only allege foreign conspiracies to undermine his government but also moved to crush faith in Tanzania’s scientific research community. He once stated that “probably, the technicians are also bought to mislead” on infection and mortality rates in the country. 

The head of the national research unit in charge of understanding Tanzania’s case count and kinds of infection was sacked after his outfit was accused of finding coronavirus in goats and pawpaw.

The government then launched an investigation into “criminal possibility at the national laboratory”. While most African countries placed restrictions on public life, Tanzania did not. Apart from full churches and mosques, stadia were also loaded with soccer fans and continue to be.

President John Magufuli of Tanzania, who has made global news headlines for advocating lax measures in his country in spite of the pandemic, is reportedly in a hospital receiving treatment for a coronavirus infection.

The BBC reported on Wednesday that Magufuli has not made a public appearance in some time, prompting Tanzanians to ask for the whereabouts of their president. However, according to opposition leader Tundu Lissu, the president is on admission in a hospital due to COVID-19, per his (Lissu’s) sources.

Lissu explained that information available to him has it that Magufuli, 61, was flown to Kenya on Monday night but rather quietly. He also added that Magufuli may have suffered a cardiac arrest in his illness.

Nairobi Hospital which is said to be where the Tanzanian leader has been admitted refused to comment on the allegation, the BBC said.

The 53-year-old opposition leader also alleges that Philip Mpango, the Finance Minister who made a public appearance a few weeks ago but was captured on camera coughing unstoppably, has also been admitted at Nairobi Hospital.

Understandable cover of darkness

If Magufuli is truly in a hospital having been infected by the virus, it would be understandable that his treatment is under a cover of darkness. Last year, the ultraconservative leader declared a “victory” of the pandemic because of what he said were the prayers of Tanzanians.

Magufuli’s administration had declared that the country was coronavirus-free. This came after government insisted normal public life would have to go on in spite of suspected increase in cases leading up to the end of last year. Schools remained opened as did churches, the establishments Magufuli credited with the “success” of Tanzania’s fight.

“The corona disease has been eliminated thanks to God,” Magufuli once stated in a speech, apparently because of prayers. The spiritual inclination was not a joke as the government warned the American Embassy in Dar-es-Salaam to stay out of Tanzania’s internal affairs after the American envoy issued a statement in May 2020 claiming that hospitals in the commercial capital were on the verge of collapse due to admitting coronavirus-infected patients.

Magufuli did not only allege foreign conspiracies to undermine his government but also moved to crush faith in Tanzania’s scientific research community. He once stated that “probably, the technicians are also bought to mislead” on infection and mortality rates in the country. The head of the national research unit in charge of understanding Tanzania’s case count and kinds of infection was sacked after his outfit was accused of finding coronavirus in goats and pawpaw.

The government then launched an investigation into “criminal possibility at the national laboratory”. While most African countries placed restrictions on public life, Tanzania did not. Apart from full churches and mosques, stadia were also loaded with soccer fans and continue to be.

One of the challenges confronting Africans in the diaspora is the ability to remit to their relatives through safe and cheaper means. Despite the existence of many banking solutions, Africans in the diaspora continue to face multiple challenges sending money home, particularly, irregular migrants.

A Tanzanian entrepreneur created a hassle-free, offline mobile money payment platform to make sending money to the continent cheaper. Benjamin Fernandes co-founded Nala following the frustrations of some Africans in the diaspora with mobile money payment services.

The app, which is live in Tanzania and other African countries including Uganda, has over 250,000 users. The app makes it easier for users to send money to anyone on any device. All one has to do is download the app to start transacting. 

In Tanzania, Uganda and other East African states, internet penetration is low. Nala’s offline solution mode allows users to send money without data or internet services and at no extra cost.

Prior to starting Nala, Fernandes was a television host of youth talk shows and sports shows in Tanzania. He migrated to the U.S. for his first degree at the evangelical Christian University of Northwestern in St. Paul. At the university, the former TV host took interest in economics. He received a full scholarship to school at Stanford through the school’s Africa MBA Fellowship in 2014 and moved back to America.

“I took the two years at Stanford to learn everything I can about fintech,” Fernandes recalled. “In the summer I started working at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and that’s where I met Sam Castle. He was a PhD student at Washington doing research in mobile payments in MENA and Sub-Saharan Africa.

After Fernandes’ studies, he returned home and started working on Nala while convincing Castle to come on board. Fernandes was a previous winner of the Seedstars Tanzania and the Ecobank Fintech Challenge.

Nala announced in January that it was planning to roll out its beta app targeting UK customers sending back remittances to Uganda and Kenya this year, according to Tech in Africa. This payment option will also be available to Tanzanian customers.

Fernandes said Nala does not only make it easy for people to transact, but also provides users with insight into their accounts. “The offline application allows us to build trust, which is the backbone for any company in the financial services industry,” he said, according to cardrates.com. “As we build that trust, we can enable and leverage other services to layer on top of what we’re already doing.”

His goal is to operate in at least 30 countries. Since the app was launched in Tanzania and expanded to Uganda, it has seen a massive subscription. “I wish I could build 15 different fintech companies in Africa because there’s so much that needs to be done,” he said. “Most people think it’s easy, but it’s not. If it were easy, everyone would do it.”

Fernandes attributes the success of his business to building trust. “That means we always have to let users know what we’re doing and what security measures we’re taking with our application,” he said.

A 66-year-old Tanzanian woman, who accidentally swallowed a toothbrush while brushing the back of her throat, has had the object successfully removed from her intestine by a team of specialists at the Benjamin Mkapa Hospital (BMH) in the East African nation’s capital city of Dodoma, according to local news outlet.

The toothbrush was reportedly removed from her stomach through gastroscopy. The procedure involves the use of a thin, flexible tube known as an endoscope to “view and operate on the internal organs and vessels.”

The endoscope, which is inserted into the stomach through the esophagus, is attached with a light and camera that is connected to a screen to enable doctors to see what they’re doing. The woman who swallowed the toothbrush was reportedly referred to specialists at the Benjamin Mkapa Hospital after she was initially taken to a nearby health facility.

“I was brushing my throat before I accidentally swallowed a piece of toothbrush,” the woman said in an interview.

A doctor who spoke to the news outlet said the procedure to remove the toothbrush from the woman’s stomach took about ten minutes.

“Before the procedure, the patient underwent an x-ray to establish the piece of toothbrush was situated. The whole process took at least 10 minutes,” Dr. Amonius Rutashobya said.

John Magufuli, Tanzania’s 61-year-old president, is very much a moralist. He will not apologize for grounding his politics in conservative Christian values and neither is anyone to expect that the former high school teacher would back down.

Magufuli espouses a simplified Aristotelian sense of justice, an equitable distribution to those deserving of good and bad. This notion of justice as fairness and as rightness was integral to his election to the presidency, initially in 2015. It also helped that he marketed himself as an upright Christian man who was very much aware of the biases of his eletorate.

Initially, the man inspired hope, taking his moral politics into rooting out an African problem of rot in the Tanzanian public service. He launched a war on corruption and was unforgiving to those who fed off the labor and mite put in by poor and ordinary Tanzanians. But there were also downsides to Magufuli’s religion-powered politics that saw him make life harder for the LGBTQ+ community in his country as well as propagate the belief that people who employ family planning and birth control are “lazy [people] afraid they will not be able to feed their children”.

Neither of the two unfortunate actions taken by Magufuli can be overlooked, however, treating a deadly pandemic as if is a fight of spirituality and determinedly ruling out scientific measures for saving lives is definitely the lowest point in the presidency of a man with a respectable doctorate in chemistry.

First of all, Magufuli’s administration had declared that the country was coronavirus-free. This came after government insisted normal public life would have to go on in spite of suspected increase in cases leading up to the end of last year. Schools remained opened as did churches, the establishments Magufuli credited with the “success” of Tanzania’s fight.

“The corona disease has been eliminated thanks to God,” Magufuli once stated in a speech, apparently because of the prayers of Tanzanians. The spiritual inclination was not a joke as the government warned the American Embassy in Dar-es-Salaam to stay out of Tanzania’s internal affairs after the American envoy issued a statement in May 2020 claiming that hospitals in the commercial capital were on the verge of collapse due to admitting coronavirus-infected patients.

The US Embassy alleged that coronavirus cases were seriously and intentionally underreported. All that while, Magufuli had been imploring his compatriots to pray and nothing more. Any pressure that came from elements outside Tanzania was deemed adversarial to his government.

Magufuli did not only allege foreign conspiracies to undermine his government but also moved to crush faith in Tanzania’s scientific research community. He once stated that “probably, the technicians are also bought to mislead” on infection and mortality rates in the country. The head of the national research unit in charge of understanding Tanzania’s case count and kinds of infection was sacked after his outfit was accused of finding coronavirus in goats and pawpaw.

The government then launched an investigation into “criminal possibility at the national laboratory”. While most African countries placed restrictions on public life, Tanzania did not. Apart from full churches and mosques, stadia were also loaded with soccer fans and continue to be.

Now, the government is no more sticking to its narrative that COVID-19 has been defeated through prayers. Rather, government authorities are belittling infection rates and advocating alternative remedies including “steam inhalation, and eating fruits and vegetables”, according to Suleiman Jafo, the country’s Minister of Local Governments.

Jafo’s advocacy has actually been sanctioned by Health Minister Dorothy Gwajim, a physician. Gwajim preaches at pressers and on media channels that a concoction involving ginger, lemon, onions and pepper would prevent coronavirus infections.

She maintains that her country has “its own procedure on how to receive any medicines and we do so after we have satisfied ourselves with the product”. For now, Tanzania is rejecting any and all vaccines approved for usage by either the World Health Organization (WHO) or developed countries.

Intriguingly, some government communications give away the impression that authorities are aware of a dire situation. For instance, Magufuli recently accused travelers to Tanzania of “importing a new weird corona”. But there is also a difficulty for a government pursuing propaganda while aiming to force public compliance with preventive measures.

An official of the Health Ministry publicly advised Tanzanians to wear face masks “not because of corona, like some people think, but it’s to prevent respiratory diseases”. The prevention of “respiratory diseases” is the message the Health Ministry is partially running with these days.

While other African countries are working assiduously to procure vaccines while strategically managing infections inland, Tanzania will undoubtedly be behind the curve when the world hopefully nears the light at the end of the tunnel. But obviously, it is within the capacity of a scientist-president to change the impending narrative.

The historic fourth UN World Conference on Women held in Beijing, China, in 1995 was chaired by Ms. Gertrude Mongella of Tanzania who to this day is called “Mama Beijing” in her home country for being instrumental during deliberations at the conference.

Mongella was born in September 1945, a month before the United Nations was incorporated that same year. She was born in Ukerewe, an island in Lake Victoria, and then went on to school at age 12 in the Tanzanian mainland. She is married with four children: one daughter and three sons.

The 75-year-old diplomat said she is a proud citizen of the world, an educationist who taught at Changombe Teachers College, Tanzania, from 1970 to 1975. She was also a curriculum developer at the Institute of Adult Education from 1975 to 1978. Mongella is a defender of women’s rights and a politician who has served in several capacities in her country and on the international front.

The diplomat told Africa Renewal last month that she is happy to be alive because she survived at birth as a baby girl at a time most babies did not. A parliamentarian in Tanzania, Mongella served in the Prime Minister’s office from 1982 to 1985 responsible for Women’s Affairs.

In 1985, she was vice-chair of the World Conference to Review and Appraise the Achievement of the United Nations Decade for Women and chair to the African delegation to that conference.

The highlight of her career was when, as a diplomat to the UN, she chaired the Fourth World Conference on Women as the General Secretary. According to her, the status and dignity of women in the global arena were elevated by the UN through this conference. She said the conference remains one of the largest conferences ever to be held in the UN as it brought together about 15,000 people from 185 nations who met in Beijing. They discussed issues affecting women such as HIV and AIDS infection, literacy and education, violence and abuse, and poverty.

The conference brought to the forefront issues relating to gender equality and women’s empowerment. “It brought a kind of ‘revolution’ where we have to look at women and men as equal citizens of this world. Women should not be considered like ‘invitees’ on this planet.  They belong to the planet just like the men,” she recalled.

The Platform of Action, which Mongella refers to as “the most important document” she has ever come across, was produced and adopted in Beijing by the General Secretary and all other participants. The Platform of Action remains the most progressive blueprint ever for advancing women’s rights.

According to The Courier magazine, Mongella’s “tremendous personal energy” greatly contributed to the Beijing conference’s success.”

Her “commitment and maternal warmth (which conceals a steely determination), helped in the conference’s trickier moments. She had to reconcile the irreconcilable: trying to bring countries at opposite ends of the moral spectrum together to agree on a final text.”

The level of diplomacy exhibited by Mongella was exceptional. According to reports, she exhibited patience, tenacity, respect for one another’s opinions and simplicity. It was also the first time in history that “important decisions at this level” were deliberated and put into action by a women-only forum.

Mongella is still championing women’s rights 25 years after chairing the UN World Conference on Women. She told Maryknoll reporter that year that “women will change the world when they lead it.”

The educator and activist is highly committed to the political integration of Africa and advocates for the strong participation of women in political leadership. She nonetheless believes men should not be marginalized as the world makes strides in educating women and financially empowering them.

TANZANIA is rapidly walking towards a cash-free nation following a tremendous surge of mobile money transactions for both telephone and banking sectors.

The trend gained pace in the recent years following raising awareness, digital transaction easiness of mobile payment system and coming into force of the National Payment System Act, 2015.

The mobile money transaction, alone, in the first five months of this year reached 38.869tri/- compared to 94.6tri/- for the entire last year.

Moreover, the number of active registered accounts for mobile money was 26.3 million at end of May compared to 19.79 million in 2015.

The Bank of Tanzania (BoT) said in the past five years payments, clearing and settlement systems continued to operate efficiently with growing utilisation of digital channels in financial services delivery.

"The increase is mainly attributed to increased public awareness on the use of mobile phones as payment instruments that facilitate mobile banking more efficiently and conveniently," BoT said yesterday in a special statement attributed to five years achievement of the current regime.

The central bank said presently, most high value government payments, including tax, were being done electronically through payment systems managed by the BoT.

"The use of these payment systems have enabled the government to increase efficiency in making payments and reduce costs associated with payments using cheques," BoT said.

The law, according to the central bank, had improved the scope of regulations by addressing new electronic and mobile money transfers, intensifying increased use of digital financial services thus leading to reduced transaction costs and support growth of economic activities.

Therefore, the volume of mobile payment transactions has increased from 1.38billion in 2015 to 2.84billion in 2019 while the value of mobile payment transactions increased from 47.21tri/- in 2015 to 94.6tri/- in 2019.

The value of mobile banking, also, continued exhibiting growth as evidenced by its increased trend from 2.75tri/- in 2017 to 9.47tri/- in 2019.

Also in the first five months of this year, the value of mobile banking was 4.98tri/-.

An economist-cum-banker Dr Hildebrand Shayo said digital transaction increase in the economy could highly and affordably connect industrialists and suppliers with banks, and new markets for their goods and services.

"It also increases or accelerates business registration and payments for business licences and permits by reducing cost of doing business.

Digital financial services can also improve access to saving accounts and loans that electronic wage payments to workers can increase security and reduce the time and cost of paying employees," Dr Shayo noted.

However, the economist-cum-banker said there are challenges when many entrepreneurs and employees lack bank accounts, digital devices, and reliable technology infrastructure, among other things.

"Many entrepreneurs and employees lack documents such as government-issued identity cards or birth certificates, which are required to use digital services," he explained.

Currently, the central bank said, there are 37 commercial banks providing mobile banking services.

Mobile money usage was pushed up during the outbreak of Covid-19 when the central bank increased daily transactions limit from 3.0m/- to 5.0m/- aiming to minimize congestion.

"This, according to BoT, was a way of leveraging digital payment platforms and minimizing congestion".

The measures improved liquidity in the economy such that the impact of the Covid-19 could not induce serious economic effect as realisation of monetary policy goals remains encouraging than previously anticipated.