'Mwalimu Nyerere' 353,320 teachers are writing on their own walls,Vs your Own 'Fikra'

As Of this week data from the influential social media statistics collector, Socialbakers.com, Tanzania has reached a number of 353320 facebookers each writing on his/her wall.This is 0.84% of the Tanzanians; which means less than one person in hundread of Tanzanians access this phenomenomal social network.

To put it in another boring statistical data, Tanzania is in number 99th among 215 facebook users listed . USA is in top of the list with 155,981,460 users that equals to 50% of her population. Our next door neighbour Kenya is at number 71 with 1,232,800.

Founded in 2004 With Harvard graduates, Facebook is at infant stages of replacing word of mouth as a tool of human communication. Increasingly global traditional mainstream media is being replaced by this important social media network.

I bet Julius Nyerere, a first Tanzanian President is gazing with awe; how his defunct 'Daily News' & Radio Tanzania are increasingly being degraded and regarded as out fashion by generation X, who are now signing in each morning to facebook Vs waiting eargearly for a messenger to distribute a morning paper.

Tanzanian citizens aged 50-60 can vividly remember old days of Daily News and Uhuru when the duo were the only official print-medium of communication. Information was mainly sensored through one body known in swahili, ( Shirika la Habari Tanzania, SHIHATA). This was a replica of REUTERS. The former ruler Mwalimu( meaning 'The Teacher) was the only one allowed to write on the wall through the medium of the state controlled media.

Now with technology; information travels like wild fire. At the touch of the button, virtually anybody with a computer, a modem, or smart phone can access the net and utilize social media network to write any idea he/she wants to pass on.

Hang on, i am also thinking of the poor recepients/ readers of the info on the wall. Some of the ideas can intentionally or unintentionally misled the society with massive consequence. It is with this anxiousness of poor editorial status in mind tha our readers can be bombarded with gabbages and thus creating a stupid society.

History will judge who is right or wrong, Nyerere with his heavy hand censorship or those dudes from Harvard.

CONSTITUTION REFORMS!!! SEXY IT UP TO ACCOMODATE ILLITERATES & GENERATION X

Tanzanians are fond of seasonal stories; and the current one on our mind is constitution reform. Political gurus from CCM and opposition are tightining up their muscles on who wins what!!. At the end of the day, Tanzanians are not good on technical terms so to say on what constitution is all about.

In my 41 years of existing in this country, i have not seen the constitution,and most of my folks share the same sentiment. The biggest and most influential book of all the laws on the land remains engulfed within the pysche of top leaders and tiny class elite.

Now we hear that the Parliament, mainly consisting of rulling party members have approved the bill sent earlier by the goverment on the way of organising public opinion about what should be inserted/removed in the constitution.

I may add some sexy tips on what should consist in our noble constitution; not in the content by on the design and format.

According to TWAWEZA, an NGO based in our Country, One in five primary school graduates; that is 20% can can not read a swahili story of class two. Again there was a revelation some time ago of a form three student failing to read and write. These're the citizens whose constitution is bound to serve.

A the other end of the tunnel, there's a generation X.This is the smart sect of our population whose mentality reflects a shift from agricultural economy to a service one with computer technology wooven into their lives. The 'X' factor is comfortable with using mobile phones, e-mail, laptops, Blackberrys,and IPAD at workplace and homes. In this respect, to be meaningful, The constitution should be sexed up, or spiced up to accomodate lifestyle of this high tech geeks as well as illeterates.

This begs a question. How will the goverment serve this army of active citizenry.

I am of the opinion that a well intentioned constitution should be in various sexy formats, soft copies Vs defunct hard copy version, with a possibility of a soundbites of a 'bongo flava' singer such as diva Lady Jay Dee, narrating the power vested to the President to the 'dont care' citizens.

As of now, the world is shifting from the authoritative rule of the left brained inhabitants to the right brained ones. Left brained souls depend on logic and analysis when executing or appreciating facts at hand, while right brained ones are more visual and can do too many things at a time. Right brained gigs can work on the desk while chatting on the facebook, listening to music and sipping a cup of coffee. Generation X are mostly right brained dudes/ladies. Gone are the days of left brained bookworms, marxists and very serious class of elite who were spending considerable time perussing volumes of encyclopedias.

Generation X is not the the future of our nation, ( Taifa la kesho) as the out of fashion left brained will want us to believe, but the present citizenry that need to be wooed at any cost. The ealier the better. Not accomodating youth can adversely attract soft-revolution engineered by facebook enthuasists who chats 24/7.

For the reference point or evidence one should look at the recent arabic revolution and Baraka Obama triumph to the Presidency engineered by facebookers.

Together, generation X and a mob of illiterates will determine the future State.

Old dudes beware, facebookers, and illeterates are changing the show.

THE BRIEF HISTORY OF CATHOLICISM IN KAGERA

The Catholic diocese of Bukoba was first evangelised in 1892 by the Missionaries of Africa (White Fathers) led by bishop Joseph Hirth who was running from turbulent Buganda (in Uganda). In December 1892 they founded their first mission at Kashozi some 16 kilometers from Bukoba. From 1994 when South Nyanza vicariate was cut from Uganda, Kashozi became its Episcopal see including all the lake zone and Rwanda.

The first ten years were difficult as they were opposed by the tribal chiefs, traditions priests (embandwa) and even by the German officials who did not like the Christian message that was preached to the people. The second mission was founded at Katoke in Biharamulo presently Rulenge - Ngara Diocese but it remained dormant until 1902.

It was the coming of Von Steumer as the German head of the station at Bukoba that changed the fortunes of the missionaries. He supported their efforts especially in the field of education. From then on education became the main tool of evangelisation.

They slowly opened other missions, Buyango (1902) which later moved to Mugana (1905), Kagondo (1904), Rubya (1905) and Bukoba (Bunena 1910). From then it grew and developed institutions. The vicariate under bishop Hirth opened its seminary at Kyegoromora (Kagondo) in 1903 and later moved it to Rubya in 1904 which had the first priests in 1917, a great achievement. The first priests were from Bukoba, Mwanza and Rwanda, the two from Bukoba were Fr. Willibald Mupapi and Fr. Oscar Kyakalaba. In 1964 Ntungamo major seminary was opened and from 1967 it serves as a philosophical regional seminary.

In 1912 Rwanda was cut off from Nyanza vicariate taking bishop Hirth with it and Nyanza came under bishop Joseph Sweens who resided in Rubya.

In 1929, Kagera was separated from the rest of the late zone and was made into a vicariate of Bukoba that comprised the present dioceses of Bukoba, Rulenge-Ngara and Kayanga. In 1933 a congregation of African sisters of St. Theresa of the Child Jesus was formed and has developed and to-day has almost 500 members well prepared and doing wonderful work. It replaced the pious women association of Bashomesa forunded by bishop Sweens in 1924. The Theresian sisters are now working in three countries, Tanzania, Kenya and Burundi with ** convents in *** dioceses.

In 1952 from Bukoba was created a small vicariate of Lower Kagera later named Rutabo diocese for a local bishop, Laurean Rugambwa. In 1960 Rugambwa was created cardinal by Pope John XXIII and was given the whole of the then Bukoba district as Bukoba diocese and the rest were formed into Rulenge diocese. This was a great honour for Bukoba and Tanzania as he was the first African cardinal ever, a prince of the Catholic Church. In 1969 he was transferred to be archbishop of Dar es Salaam and his former auxiliary bishop Gervase Nkalanga who was then Apostolic Administrator in Kabale, Uganda was appointed bishop of Bukoba (1960 – 1974)

Today the diocese of Bukoba under bishop Nestor Timanywa since 1974, in 2006 with 30 parishes had 521,256 Catholics in a population of 870,048 inhabitants which is 60%. There were 113 diocesan priests working in the diocese with a good number outside the diocese especially in national and international institutions. There are 512 religious women from 7 congregations the majority being the Theresian sisters. The diocese has another diocesan sisters’ congregation, the “Daughters of Mother Mary of Perpetual Help” which has about 46 members.

The diocese runs three hospitals of which two are designated district hospitals namely Mugana and Rubya while Kagondo is a VA hospital, two health centers and many dispensaries. The diocese runs nursery schools (kindergartens) in every parish and big outstation, primary schools, secondary schools, one Teacher Training school and a Nurse Training School.
Since January 2010, bishop Timanywa is assisted by his auxiliary bishop, Method Kilaini, the former Secretary General of the Tanzania Episcopal Conference (1991-2000) and auxiliary bishop of Dar es Salaam (2000 – Dec, 2009). Now the diocese of Bukoba is trying its best to be on the frontline not only in spiritual matters but also in development.

This article was extracted from Bukoba Diocese Website.

Why Africa Still Poor?

Originally Published On: October 24, 2005

A slogan painted on trucks and taxicabs all over Africa, much beloved by metaphor-hunting authors, reads: NO CONDITION IS PERMANENT. This is true, but some are recurring. Tyranny in Zimbabwe, famine in Niger, a constitutional coup in Togo, rampant corruption in Kenya, protesters shot in Ethiopia, an epidemic in Angola, civil war in Sudan–those are this year’s headlines, but if you think you’ve heard it all before, you have. Martin Meredith, in his new book The Fate of Africa, writes that “what is so striking about the fifty-year period since independence is the extent to which African states have suffered so many of the same misfortunes.” Some countries, like Nigeria and Zambia, have gone through cycles of reform and decay. But Meredith’s subtitle–From the Hopes of Freedom to the Heart of Despair–sums up the overall trend. It’s hard to imagine now, but in the heady days of the 1960s, much of the continent was no less prosperous than South Korea or Malaysia. While those Asian nations have transformed themselves into economic “tigers,” however, gross domestic products across Africa shrank during the last two decades of the twentieth century. Africans are getting poorer, not richer. They are living shorter, hungrier lives.

The decline of an entire continent confounds our preconceptions about human advancement. The economist Jeffrey Sachs points out in his recent book The End of Poverty that our Hegelian notion of linear progress is relatively new. For most of history, humans lived miserable existences and couldn’t expect better before the afterlife. But since the Industrial Revolution the situation has improved, and not only in the rich countries of Europe and North America. Between 1981 and 2001, Sachs says, hundreds of millions of people, many of them in Asian nations like China and India, emerged from extreme poverty. But a billion have been left behind, most of them in Africa. “The greatest tragedy of our time,” Sachs writes, is that one-sixth of all humans still live a dollar-a-day existence, scraping by on the margins of starvation.

How can one continent be so out of step with humankind’s march of progress? Everyone agrees that Africans are desperately poor and typically endure governments that are, to varying degrees, corrupt and capricious. The dispute is about causes and consequences. One group–call it the poverty-first camp–believes African governments are so lousy precisely because their countries are so poor. The other group–the governance-first camp–holds that Africans are impoverished because their rulers keep them that way. The argument may seem pedantic, but there are billions of dollars at stake, and millions of lives. The fundamental question is whether those who are well-off can salve a continent’s suffering, or if, for all our good intentions, Africans are really on their own.

Recently, the poverty-first crowd has been making a lot of noise. The weekend before the July G-8 summit in Gleneagles, Scotland, millions of people watched as pop stars in cities around the world played concerts organized by Africa crusader Bob Geldof. The event’s platform–forgive Africa’s debts, increase its development aid, end trade policies that undermine its exports–echoed the recommendations of Sachs, the antipoverty movement’s house economist. A Columbia University professor and an adviser to Kofi Annan, Sachs has lately become a favorite brain of the US Weekly set: Bono wrote his book’s introduction, and he recently starred alongside Angelina Jolie in an MTV special about their travels in Kenya. The celebrity endorsements amplify Sachs’s serious argument that for too long, rich countries have done too little to help the poor. At the end of the Gleneagles summit, world leaders announced that they would increase global aid by about $50 billion by 2010. Sachs says the poor need much more, right away: about $75 billion a year, half of it for Africa. “I reject the plaintive cries of the doomsayers who say that ending poverty is impossible,” he writes.

The doomsayers, sadly, include many of those who know the continent best. Two other recent books–Meredith’s sweeping history of the post-independence era, and Robert Guest’s more tightly focusedThe Shackled Continent–have joined the immense corpus of literature arguing that, for all the continent’s geographical and historical handicaps, Africa’s main problems are political. Guest, an optimist, believes that with better leadership African countries could catch up. But Meredith reaches a dismal conclusion. Even “given greater Western efforts,” he writes, “the sum of Africa’s misfortunes–its wars, its despotisms, its corruption, its droughts, its everyday violence–presents a crisis of such magnitude that it goes beyond the reach of foreseeable solutions. At the core of the crisis is the failure of African leaders to provide effective government.”

Meredith, a British journalist and historian, is the author of biographies of Nelson Mandela and Robert Mugabe. Here, he offers an ambitious survey of fifty years, fifty-three countries and countless wars and coups. The story begins in the early 1950s, with the first stirrings of nationalism among the colonized peoples of Africa. Seventy years of rule from afar had left the continent spectacularly ill-equipped for self-rule–a collection of states that were nations in name only, drawn up according to the realpolitical whims of the likes of Gladstone, Bismarck and Belgium’s King Leopold, who presided over the deaths of millions of Congolese. Some European powers were spiteful about leaving: French President Charles de Gaulle, piqued by the lack of deference shown him by Guinea’s Ahmed Sékou Touré, had colonial officials cart away their office furniture, while the Portuguese fought a series of bloody wars to hold on to Angola, Mozambique and Guinea-Bissau. Other colonial powers were more benevolent. Britain, for instance, built some good schools and decent roads in East Africa. What none of the Europeans left behind, however, were societies equipped to approach the immense challenge of mending the tribal, regional and religious rifts created and exacerbated–often deliberately–in the interest of dividing and ruling.

Yet in those early years, all these challenges seemed manageable. “Expectations were high,” Meredith writes, with charismatic leaders like Léopold Senghor, Senegal’s philosopher-president, and the regal Jomo Kenyatta of Kenya, seemingly poised to lead the continent to democracy and self-sufficiency. The rains were good, the harvests bountiful and the infrastructure, left behind by the Europeans, adequate. The “sense of euphoria,” Meredith writes, “had been raised to ever greater heights by the lavish promises of nationalist politicians campaigning for power, pledging to provide education, medical care, employment and land for all. ‘Seek ye first the political kingdom,’ Nkrumah had told his followers, ‘and all else shall be added unto you.’”

Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana’s first president and the first man to lead an African colony to independence, is of especial interest to Meredith, perhaps because his career established the pattern of disappointment. A former political prisoner of deep nationalist conviction, he took over when the British exited Ghana in 1957. Nkrumah was hailed worldwide as a prophet of liberation, and he acted the part, wrapping himself in kente cloth and talking of a United States of Africa. He spent hundreds of millions of dollars in a five-year spree, constructing lavish public buildings, creating nationalized industries from scratch and establishing a Kwame Nkrumah Ideological Institute to codify his thinking. He encouraged a personality cult and took grandiose titles, such as Osagyefo, which means “redeemer.”

When his popularity waned, Nkrumah turned to other methods of rule. He doled out patronage, as his cabinet ministers demanded 10 percent cuts of every public contract. (When one Nkrumah crony was questioned about his exorbitant lifestyle, he replied, “Socialism doesn’t mean that if you’ve made a lot of money, you can’t keep it.”) As Ghana went bankrupt, Nkrumah became increasingly remote, surrounded by sycophants inside Christianborg Castle, a former slaving fort. He crushed labor unions and imprisoned political opponents. After more than one attempt on his life, he created a praetorian guard within the army, made up mostly of his own tribesmen. In February 1966, while Nkrumah was on a state visit to China, the military overthrew him. Ghanaians celebrated in the streets.

With eerie uniformity, this same drama played out in country after country, as colonial exploitation gave way to the rule of homegrown tyrants. In Meredith’s account, these so-called Big Men begin to blur together. Even their flourishes seem interchangeable. Meredith, who has a gift for the mordant aside, tells us that Nkrumah built himself a large zoo that featured a boa constrictor sent by Fidel Castro. The Ivory Coast’s Félix Houphouët-Boigny allowed a sacred elephant to roam the grounds of his palace. Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie kept caged lions and leopards. Jean-Bedel Bokassa of the Central African Republic, another cat person, used to feed his lions dissidents.

Ghana was lucky by comparison. Its dictators were gentler than the likes of Bokassa, a reputed cannibal, or Idi Amin, who had one of his wives killed, dismembered and dumped in a car trunk. Coup leader Jerry Rawlings, an Air Force lieutenant, led Ghana well enough to be hailed in the 1990s as one of a “new breed” of enlightened autocrats. Rawlings presided over World Bank-mandated economic reforms. Pleased donors flooded the country with billions in foreign aid. Rawlings eventually handed over power to an elected civilian. Nonetheless, Meredith writes that in 1998 “Ghana’s gross national product was still 16 percent lower than in 1970.” This, mind you, is one of the continent’s success stories.

Meredith’s book is full of tales like this, and worse. The author seems to be emulating Thomas Pakenham’s The Scramble for Africa, an epic history of the early colonial period. But Meredith is a victim of his own scope; when he leaves southern Africa, his area of expertise, he leans heavily on earlier writers. As his narrative flits from crisis to crisis, his attempts at a wider analysis disappear into the repetitive gloom. What’s missing is a unifying idea, an explanation. For that, one must turn to Robert Guest and Jeffrey Sachs.

Guest spent years traveling the continent as an editor and writer for The Economist, and his fine book is filled with the kind of vivid details that come from spending too many nights in dingy, sweltering hotel rooms. (I should mention that he is a professional acquaintance; he edited several stories I wrote for his publication between 2002 and 2004.) Before being assigned to Africa he was stationed in booming East Asia, an experience that shapes his view of the continent’s predicament. “Any country inhabited by human beings has the potential to grow rich. We know this because many countries have already done so,” he writes. “If Africa is to succeed too, it is crucial to understand what has gone wrong in the past. Just why is Africa so poor?”

The answer, Guest believes, is misrule. In his view, corruption isn’t just a symptom of Africa’s deeper problems. It is the deeper problem. When government ministers loot social programs, it exacerbates poverty, disease and illiteracy. When customs agents demand bribes for allowing trucks to cross borders, it increases shipping costs, and hence the prices poor consumers pay. When rulers distribute jobs and contracts to their own tribal kin, it deepens ethnic divisions.

It’s no accident, Guest writes, that “the poorest one sixth of humanity endures four fifths of the world’s civil wars.” In Africa, where so many have so little, it’s easy to foment rebellion against Mercedes-driving kleptocrats. Because those who lose power are usually stripped of their ill-gotten wealth, rulers have an incentive to be paranoid and cruel. Perversely, Guest notes, countries that are blessed by nature tend to suffer the most. Nigeria has pumped $280 billion worth of oil since the 1970s, and has seen much of it siphoned off by a series of dictators. Angola endured a long, bloody conflict over its oil and diamonds. Congo is endowed with vast quantities of almost every precious mineral, and today it lies devastated by an interminable war of plunder.

Guest’s book is at its best, however, when it abandons these big stories and focuses on the everyday, showing how corrupt governments plague the lives of normal Africans. In one chapter, he recounts his experiences riding along with a truck driver and his cargo of Guinness Stout on a ridiculously arduous four-day journey across Cameroon. The route is in terrible shape; Guest notes that since 1980 the government has allowed about two-thirds of Cameroon’s roads to be reclaimed by the rainforest. But the worst holdups come at countless police roadblocks, where officers fabricate phantom offenses to generate bribes. “Do you have a gun?” a police officer asks when someone raises an objection. “No. I have a gun, so I know the rules.”

Too often in Africa, Guest says, men with guns twist the rules to enrich themselves, further impoverishing their countrymen in the process. Still, he thinks countries can work their way out of the mess, particularly if they adopt the sort of free-market policies The Economist champions. Some of Guest’s ideas are compelling, such as when he cites the work of Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto to suggest that African governments could unlock nearly $1 trillion in capital by recognizing the land rights of squatters, who might then be able to borrow money against the value of their property. Elsewhere, he is less convincing. Guest believes that a simple fear of bad publicity will prevent multinational corporations from mistreating African workers, a contention that is quite at odds with historical precedent.

When it comes to development aid, Guest believes that donor nations “should be both more generous and more selective,” rewarding countries that are “trying to implement sensible policies” and cutting off those that aren’t. Aid isn’t the answer, he says. Rather, only Africans can save Africa, by building competitive economies. Right now, he writes, Africa possesses 10 percent of the world’s population and accounts for only 2 percent of global trade; it “hardly produces anything that the rest of the world wants to buy.” Until it does, Guest believes, the continent’s shackles will stay locked.

By this point, you may think you know why Africa languishes. But you’re wrong, says Jeffrey Sachs. In making his passionate call for more foreign aid, he challenges the conventional wisdom that Africa isn’t ready for help. African governments are dictatorial? Sachs says that the thieving-tyrants-with-fly-swatters stereotype of African leaders is “passé,” and that “by the early 1990s…a little-heralded democratic revolution was sweeping the continent.” Corruption is the source of all misery? That contention, he writes, “does not withstand practical experience or serious scrutiny.” Sachs believes Africa’s problem is not politics but simple misfortune. Its soil produces less food than, for instance, East Asia’s. The continent suffers disproportionately from debilitating diseases like AIDS and malaria. Much of its population is concentrated away from its coastline, and this, combined with its lack of good roads and navigable rivers, hampers trade and economic growth. “Africa’s governance is poor,” Sachs writes, “because Africa is poor.”

The idea that Africa is a victim of geography is not new, but Sachs’s book dares to offer a big, bold solution. And an author of Sachs’s pedigree can’t be taken lightly. The globe-trotting Columbia professor is a kind of macroeconomic Winston Wolf. Like Harvey Keitel’s character in Pulp Fiction, he shows up at scenes of carnage with a snappy plan to clean things up. Sometimes he succeeds, as in Bolivia in the hyperinflationary 1980s. Sometimes he fails, as in post-Communist Russia–but never for lack of self-assurance. He says economists should think like scientists when diagnosing Africa’s ills. “In some ways,” he writes, “today’s development economics is like eighteenth-century medicine, when doctors used leeches to draw blood from their patients, often killing them in the process.”

Sachs first approached Africa in the late 1990s, at a time when foreign aid was plummeting from cold war highs. He concluded that many Africans are stuck in a “poverty trap.” They don’t make enough to save, so they can’t amass the capital necessary to build a future. (For an illustration, read Robert Guest’s account of a Malawian farmer who dreams of becoming a merchant but can’t because he finds a bicycle hopelessly expensive.) The End of Poverty contains many common-sensical ideas: Use irrigation and fertilizers to increase crop yields; distribute mosquito nets to combat malaria and pharmaceuticals to lessen the symptoms of AIDS; give rural villages cell phones to ease communication and trade. What’s grabbed the world’s attention, though, is not such incremental prescriptions but Sachs’s claim of a cure.

“The end of extreme poverty is at hand–within our generation,” he declares, if only rich nations, especially the United States, open their coffers. This, Sachs writes, “is the great opportunity of our time, a commitment that would not only relieve massive suffering and spread economic well-being, but would also promote other Enlightenment objectives of democracy, global security, and the advancement of science.” Sachs attacks those who don’t share his utopian vision, lamenting the “anti-African and antipoor attitudes” of skeptics. “Africa gets a bad rap as the ‘corrupt continent,’” he writes. “Even when such sentiments are not racist in intent, they survive in our societies as conventional wisdom because of existing widespread racism.”

Invoking the R-word in this context seems overheated, especially since those who complain loudest about corruption in Africa tend to be Africans themselves. (Bob Geldof, to his credit, recognizes this.) One might forgive Sachs’s rhetorical overkill if it weren’t emblematic of his book’s deeper failure to engage with the most serious argument against him: history. Ending African poverty is a worthy aspiration. It is also an old ideal, a shoal on which many buoyant ideologies–liberalism, communism, pan-Africanism–have run aground. Sachs talks of the need for an effort akin to the Marshall Plan for postwar Europe. Guest points out that since independence Africa has “received aid equivalent to six Marshall Plans”–with little to show for it.

Much of this assistance has been consumed by graft. Corrupt leaders have proved to be highly adaptable to changing times. When statism was in vogue, they nationalized industries, which they proceeded to operate as patronage mills. When the World Bank demanded privatization, they sold off the state companies to their cousins and cronies. Nowadays, the watchword is “transparency,” but the situation remains much the same. According to a 2002 study conducted by the African Union, corruption consumes more than a quarter of the continent’s gross domestic product every year, about $148 billion.

Faced with such facts, Sachs tries to recalculate reality. He publishes a chart of corruption figures that have been “controlled statistically for income levels” and concludes that Africa is not “distinctly poorly governed by the standards of very poor countries.” This is a little like saying if you control for height, the Ivy League is the best conference in college basketball. The generals who looted Nigeria–a government of “average” honesty by Sachs’s measure–were not stealing relative dollars: Check their Swiss bank statements. Some, like Guest, contend that in Africa corruption matters more than anywhere else, because the margin of survival is so thin. Rapacious rulers are literally stealing bread from the mouths of those they serve.

Sachs’s solution sounds simple enough: Lavish billions on good countries like Ghana and punish bad ones like Zimbabwe by stopping the checks. The hitch is that the list of countries considered “good” and “bad” keeps changing. Sachs’s favorites include Ethiopia, Uganda and Mozambique. But fifteen years ago these countries were basket cases; Zimbabwe was the success story, under the wise rule of its benevolent autocrat Robert Mugabe. Fifteen years before that, the paragons were Nigeria and Ivory Coast. Whenever a darling disintegrates, much of what development aid finances–paved roads, schools, hospitals, advanced farms–is destroyed, and the process must begin anew.

The closer you look at some of Sachs’s chosen countries, the more you wonder about his judgment. Take Kenya, for instance. Sachs minimizes the problem of corruption there, attacking leery donors for their “useless and false moralizing,” but no Kenyan I’ve ever met would share his lack of concern. (Nor, it’s likely, would the country’s former anticorruption czar, who resigned earlier this year in frustration.) One leader Sachs frequently consults, Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, has lately been acting like an old-school dictator, imprisoning political opponents after an allegedly fraudulent election. In Uganda, where more than half the country’s budget comes from foreign aid, a recent confidential report written for the World Bank concludes that donor aid is becoming a “mechanism for regime maintenance,” allowing the ruling party to set up “slush funds” to pay for patronage and a military buildup. Meanwhile, the percentage of Ugandans living in poverty has risen. Sachs says this is nothing an extra $1.8 billion a year won’t fix.

The point is that playing favorites requires vigilance and a willingness to recognize when success is turning sour. Africa is not the unremitting disaster Martin Meredith portrays. Countries like Botswana and Senegal stand out as models of stability, and Sachs is right to say that more Africans enjoy more democracy today than ever before. Everyone who knows the continent well believes it could benefit from a boost in generosity and–especially–closer attention from the American government. But an endeavor as ambitious as ending African poverty demands a little humility in the face of the task. We must recognize history, and understand the continent as it is, not as we wish it to be. To worry about corruption and misrule is to amplify the concerns of Africans I’ve met all over the continent, whose greatest anger is inevitably reserved for those leaders who have misspent so much in their names. Their voices should be heard, too, over the din of the rock concerts.

COURTESY OF: Andrew Rice, THE Nation

UCHUMI WA KAGERA WAWEZA KUFUFULIWA

MKOA wa Kagera ulikuwa ukiitwa mkoa wa Ziwa Magharibi (West Lake). Ulipata jina la sasa mwaka 1979, baada ya vita kati ya Tanzania na Uganda.

Hivi vilikuwa vita vya kumfukuza na hatimaye kumwondoa dikteta Iddi Amin wa Uganda aliyekuwa amevamia Tanzania.

Amin alivamia na kukalia eneo la Kagera akidai kuwa mpaka halali kati ya nchi hizi mbili ulikuwa Mto Kagera; pale Kyaka.

Kwa wenyeji wa mkoa huu, neno Kagera linatokana na “Akagera,” yaani kijito kinachotiririsha maji yake katika mto mkubwa au ziwa. Mto Kagera hutiririsha maji yake katika Ziwa Viktoria.

Maji haya ya Kagera huonekana wazi kuwa hayakai ziwani bali hukatisha ziwa na kuwa chanzo cha Mto Nile ambao ni mto mrefu kuliko yote duniani.

Mkoa wa Kagera ni miongoni mwa mikoa michache iliyobahatika kupata maendeleo makubwa kiuchumi na kijamii kabla na baada ya uhuru.

Wamisionari wa madhehebu ya Kilutheri na Wakatoliki (Missionaries of Africa/White Fathers), waliingia Bukoba mwishoni mwa miaka ya 1880 na kuanzisha shule za msingi, sekondari na vyuo vya ualimu.

Moja ya vyuo hivyo ni Chuo cha Ualimu cha Kajunguti, katika wilaya ya Muleba. Chuo hicho kilikwishafungwa. Miongoni mwa shule za sekondari zilizoanzishwa na wamisionari ni St. Thomas More College (Ihungo) na Nyakato.

Wamisionari pia walifungua hospitali mbalimbali na vituo vya afya. Miongoni mwa hospitali hizo ni Rubya, Kagondo na Ndolage, zote za wilaya ya Muleba; Mugana (Misenyi), Biharamulo, Nyakahanga na Isingiro, wilayani Karagwe na Murugwanza, wilayani Ngara.

Kwa takriban miaka 500 sasa, wakazi wa mkoa wa Kagera wamekuwa wakistawisha migomba kwa ajili ya chakula (ndizi) na mibuni – kwa ajili ya biashara (kahawa).

Wakulima wa kahawa walianzisha ushirika wao chini ya Chama Kikuu cha Ushirika cha Bukoba Cooperative Union (BCU), ambacho kilianzishwa mwaka 1948.

Miongoni mwa waanzilsihi wa BCU ni mzee George Clement Kahama, ambaye alishika nyadhifa mbalimbali serikalini.

Kupitia ushirika wao, wakulima wa Kagera waliweza kusomesha watoto wao ndani na nje ya nchi. BCU iligharamia masomo ya wanafunzi hao.

Wakulima pia walianzisha umoja wa aina ya sasa ya Kuweka na Kukopa, maarufu kama “Ihanika.” Hadi miaka ya 1955, mfuko huo ulikuwa na zaidi ya Sh. 400 milioni.

Lakini uchumi wa mkoa na wananchi ulianza kuonyesha mdororo baada ya uhuru. Inaonekana kuwa nguzo kuu zake zilianza kulegea na hatimaye kung’oka.

Utawala wa asili wa kichifu ulitupiliwa mbali. Pamoja na mfumo huo kuwa wa upendeleo kwa watawala na hata kuhalalisha unyonyaji kwa njia ya miliki ya ardhi, ulikuwa na taratibu shinikizi zilizowezesha uwajibikaji kimila na hasa katika uzalishaji mashambani.

Hili lilifuatiwa na mpango wa serikali wa kuweka ushirika chini yake badala ya kuwa mikononi mwa wananchi.

Katika mazingira haya, hata mfuko wa wananchi, Ihanika, ukatoweka na serikali haikufanya juhudi kuwafidia. Hapa uchumi uliokuwa umeshamiri ukaingia misukosuko.

Kwa miaka mingi, wananchi wa Kagera walikuwa wakifanya biashara na wenzao wa Uganda. Utawala wa Amin uliondoa ushirikiano na kupunguza mwingiliano.

Kuvunjika kwa Jumuiya ya Afrika Mashariki mwaka 1977 kulikofuatia, kuliziba vifereji vya mahusiano ya kiuchumi yasiyorasmi vilivyokuwa vimesalia.

Vita vya Kagera (1978/79), vilipiganiwa katika ardhi ya mkoa wa Kagera. Biashara ndogo na kubwa ziliharibika. Mtindo wa maisha ulivuruguka. Wananchi wakawa wakimbizi ndani ya nchi yao. Uchumi ukaanguka zaidi na umasikini ukashamiri.

Watu wengi walifariki katika vita. Mali zao ziliharibiwa pamoja na miundombuinu – barabara, shule, hospitali na mabenki.

Rais Julius Nyerere alitoa miezi 18 kumaliza matatizo hayo na kurejesha maisha katika hali ya kawaida; lakini miezi hiyo haijaisha hadi leo.

Ndipo ikaja “Operation Uhujumu Uchumi” mwaka 1983. Zoezi hilo liliendeshwa chini ya aliyekuwa mkuu wa mkoa wa Kagera, Kanali Nsa Kaisi.

Katika sakasaka na kamatakamata, watu wengi waliswekwa ndani; mali zilikamatwa, baadhi walifilisiwa kwa halali au haramu na, katika hali isiyo na maelezo, baadhi ya mali, zikiwa zimeharibika, zilirejeshwa kwa wenyewe bila hata “pole.”

Kukamatwa kwa magari (malori), kwa mfano, kulisababisha maisha magumu vijijini kwa kuwa wananchi hawakupata mahitaji.

Wakati huo, vyama vya ushirika ambavyo sasa vilikuwa vimerejeshwa chini ya mfumo wa kiserikali, vikawa vimeingiliwa na kile wanaita “mchwa.”

Watu wasiokuwa waaminifu wakajipenyeza na kuwaibia wakulima wa kahawa. Imani ya wananchi ikapungua. Ari ya kilimo ikaanza kupotea.

Hapa ushirika wa BCU/KCU uliokuwa na nguvu, ukameguka. Wananchi wa wilaya ya Karagwe wakajitenga na kuanzisha Karagwe District Cooperative Union (KDCU). Biharamulo nao wakajitenga wakaanzisha Biharamulo Cooperative Union (BCU).

Yote haya yalikuwa na athari mbaya kwa uchumi na maisha ya wananchi mkoani Kagera.

Kana kwamba hayo yalikuwa hayatoshi, ukaingia ugonjwa wa ukimwi. Mgonjwa wa kwanza wa ukimwi aligundulika mkoani Kagera mwaka 1983.

Uzito wa janga hilo unashuhudiwa kwa makaburi “mabichi” yaliyojaa mashambani. Vijana waliokuwa wakichakarika kwa kufanya biashara, wamekufa kwa kasi isiyomithilika.

Wakati mwingine waweza kutembelea nyumba moja na kukuta pikipiki tatu au nne zimeegeshwa. Ni za vijana waliokufa “kwa ukimwi” ambao walikuwa watafutaji wa neema kwa familia.

Hivyo wazalishaji wakubwa wakaangamia kwa ukimwi. Wakabaki wazee. Familia nyingi zikawa na mzigo wa kutunza yatima. Muda mwingi wa kuzalisha mali ukapotea kuuguza wagonjwa, kutunza yatima na kuhudhuria mazishi na matanga.

Ndipo likaja janga la kuzama kwa meli – mv BUKOBA, tarehe 21 Mei 1996. Inakadiriwa wengi wa abiria waliokufa katika ajali hiyo walikuwa wa mkoa wa Kagera; wengi wao wakiwa vijana watafutaji waliokuza uchumi wa mkoa.

Sasa kumezuka ugonjwa wa kunyausha migomba (Banana Xanthomonas Wilt-BXW) na ugonjwa wa kahawa (Coffee Fusarium Wilt-CFW).

Kama hakuna kahawa na hakuna migomba (ndizi), siyo tu uchumi bali maisha ya wananchi yako hatarini. Hakujawa na mbadala wa maana.

Nani ataisemea Kagera? Kuna matatizo mengi lakini mengine yaweza kuwekwa kwenye ngazi ya changamoto.

Je, tukianza na kongamano kubwa la wanaoitakia mema Kagera, hatuwezi kutotoa njia za kuinua uchumi na maisha ya wananchi mkoani?

Mkoa una hali ya joto la wastani la sentigredi 26.02. Mvua zinanyesha kwa wastani wa milimita 800 hadi 1,200 kwa mwaka – kati ya Septemba na Januari na kati ya Machi na Mei.

Inawezekana.

Makala hii ilitokea kwenye gazeti la MwanaHalisi la tarehe 25/MAY 2011