Christian-Muslim Relations in Tanzania: A Threat to Future Stability and Peace?

This paper examines Christian-Muslim relations in Tanzania with a view of establishing whether recent confrontations between Muslims and Christians are a real threat to the future of interfaith relations. The paper gathers information and evidence from secondary sources, and primary sources such as blog posts, personal communications, etc. The findings are that although recent confrontations may seem to challenge the relative peaceful interfaith relations, the cases presented do not give adequate evidence to make a conclusion that the future of Christian-Muslim relations is bleak. The paper concludes that far from being motivated by religious factors, recent confrontations have little to do with religious differences and more to do with political manipulations of religious diversity. Keywords: Christian-Muslim relations, Tanzania, religion, politicisation, religious diversity

The Fallacy of Limited Financial Resources for Development in Tanzania: Evidence from Local Government Authorities Audit Reports

Often times people are told by government officials that there are limited financial resources to finance different development projects/programmes and to provide assistance for self help. This view is also held by the academic world. This is usually taken as an absolute truth and usually as an excuse for the limited socio-economic development of the citizens and societies. While this may be true, we propose a problematisation of this by gathering and making sense of evidence from the annual audit reports for the Local Government Authorities (LGAs) in Tanzania. The central aim of the proposed paper therefore is to show the fallacy of “the limited resources” by arguing that it is not a matter of limited resources but whether and how the available resources are put to intended use for development and poverty reduction goals. The relevance of this is to shift focus on development resources available to whether and how the extent to which the resources are put to use and to establish whether LGAs are keeping people into poverty by using or not using the available resources. Keywords: LGAs, limited financial resources, Tanzania, Audit reports, development

Natural Resource Conflicts as a Struggle for Space: The Case of Mining in Tanzania

Natural resource extraction in Africa has been characterised by conflicts between large scale and small scale miners on the one hand and large scale miners and the communities on the other. In some countries such as Sudan, Democratic Republic of Congo, Angola, Mozambique, Sierra Leone and Liberia, natural resources have bred political instability and civil wars. A great deal of academic discourse on resource conflicts in Africa focuses on greed, corruption, political struggles for state capture and control over resources, economic liberalisation policies for attracting foreign investors and creating conducive climate for them to invest their capital in natural resource extraction, and foreign forces. While recognising the significance of the above approaches in explaining resource conflicts in Africa, this paper aims at explaining resource conflicts as a struggle for space between the communities, artisanal and small scale miners and large scale foreign mining corporations. The paper, therefore, argues that natural resource extraction conflicts in Africa can well be understood if we approach them as a struggle for space. Data for this paper are drawn from secondary sources including academic literature, government reports, media reports and internet sources

Africa’s Leadership Challenges in the 21st Century: What Can Leaders Learn from Africa’s Pre-Colonial Leadership and Governance?

Africa continues to face serious development challenges. Such challenges as dependency, corruption, underdeveloped infrastructure and production sectors, leadership and governance, etc are some of the impediments to Africa’s quest for sustainable and equitable development. Explaining such development challenges has continued to elude scholars. To the radical leftist scholars, Africa’s underdevelopment can adequately be explained by its forceful and uneven integration into the global economic system. However, with over fifty years of independence, the debate is increasingly focusing on Africa’s leadership as good explanation for its poverty and underdevelopment. This paper argues that the current poverty and underdevelopment of Africa have much to do with enabling conditions created by African leaders and that addressing this requires Africans to go back to pre-colonial history where they can draw good lessons rather than continuing importing Western based models which may not necessarily fit into Africa’s unique characteristics

Adopting and practicing resource nationalism in Africa: A case of Tanzania's State Mining Corporation

Many resource-rich countries in Africa have at one time or the other resorted to resource nationalism in a bid to increase economic benefits and bolster state and public participation. But has this translated into improved resource governance? With a focus on Tanzania's State Mining Corporation (STAMICO), this paper critically examines whether the adoption of resource nationalism results in actual practice and improved resource governance. The paper shows that the pattern has been the same throughout: adoption of resource nationalist measures has not automatically translated into actual practice in terms of improved resource governance capacity. State enterprises have been established but the state has not injected capital into them to enable them spearhead resource nationalism into what the state wants to achieve. Consequently, resource nationalism appears to be politically motivated as a strategy to address opposition without having to invest into birthing what resource nationalism aspires to achieve

Transparency initiatives and Tanzania’s extractive industry governance

The proper management of natural resources and its proceeds is critical for resource-rich countries. Many resource-rich countries have arguably been plagued by aspects of what scholars call ‘the resource curse’. Overcoming ‘the curse' has thus occupied center stage in studies about extractive resource governance. The Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) has been promoted as having the potential to overcome some aspects of the resource curse especially the ‘rentier politics’. Several countries have adopted and domesticated the initiative. However, studies on transparency present contradictory findings about the usefulness of the initiative. This paper examines Tanzania’s adoption and implementation of transparency in extractive sector governance. The paper examined Tanzania’s EITI implementation process, its reconciliation reports and how these reports are used by the parliament, media and civil society to push for governance improvements in the sector. The review of these key documents found that adoption and implementation of the EITI has improved the extractive sector governance by making it more transparent and accountable

Natural Resource Conflicts as a Struggle for Space: The Case of Mining in Tanzania

Natural resource extraction in Africa has been characterised by conflicts between large scale and small scale miners on the one hand and large scale miners and the communities on the other. In some countries such as Sudan, Democratic Republic of Congo, Angola, Mozambique, Sierra Leone and Liberia, natural resources have bred political instability and civil wars. A great deal of academic discourse on resource conflicts in Africa focuses on greed, corruption, political struggles for state capture and control over resources, economic liberalisation policies for attracting foreign investors and creating conducive climate for them to invest their capital in natural resource extraction, and foreign forces. While recognising the significance of the above approaches in explaining resource conflicts in Africa, this paper aims at explaining resource conflicts as a struggle for space between the communities, artisanal and small scale miners and large scale foreign mining corporations. The paper, therefore, argues that natural resource extraction conflicts in Africa can well be understood if we approach them as a struggle for space.  Data for this paper are drawn from secondary sources including academic literature, government reports, media reports and internet sources