DS 102 Complete Notes

DS 102: Development Perspectives II
TOPIC 1: AGRARIAN TRANSFORMATION AND RURAL DEVELOPMENT

An Overview:
0Tanzania has 80 percent of its population living in the rural areas and only 20 percent in the
urban. Therefore real development can only happen in Tanzania if it positively affects the 80
percent and that is rural development. Soon after independence Tanzania tried that route of
development in a system known as Ujamaa through a programme of villegization. How
successful was this programme and why Tanzania abandoned the route are some of the issues
we are going to tackle in this topic.
Introduction:
Agrarian reform - deliberate attempt to reorganize and transform existing agrarian systems
with intent to improve distribution of agricultural incomes and thus foster rural development.
This may involve securing tenure rights to individual farmers, transfer of land away from small
class of powerful landowners to tenants who actually till land, appropriation of large estates for
establishing new settlement farms, and instituting irrigation schemes.
Agrarian system - pattern of land distribution, ownership and management, also the social and
institutional structure of the agrarian economy. Includes physical environment (soils,
precipitation, vegetation), behavioural environment (perception of ecosystem), operational
milieu (culture, values, institutions, political system, technology level, land tenure).
Cash crops - crops produced entirely for the market (e.g. coffee, tea, cocoa, cotton, rubber,
jute, wheat and oil palm)
Commodification or Commoditization - the increasing production of goods and services for the
market (e.g. peanuts in Senegal).
Gender division of labour - socially defined allocation of tasks between men and women in
peasant households
Green Revolution - the production revolution in grains associated with the scientific discovery
of new hybrid seed varieties of wheat, rice, and corn which resulted in high farm yields. But
such seeds are dependent upon expensive inputs such as fertilizers, pesticides and above all
require adequate water.
Integrated rural development - broad array of rural development activities including provision
of social and physical infrastructure, development of rural non-farm activities and small farmer
aids to accelerate and sustain development in the rural areas.
Land reform - reorganization of landholding and tenure structures.
Shukrani K. Mbirigenda (Institute of Development Studies-IDS, University of Dar es Salaam) 1

Plantation agriculture - cash crops (especially rubber, oil palm, tea, coffee) grown on larger
estates or smallholdings owned by private sector firms, individual families, or government.
Form of agricultural industrialization which requires varying amounts of capital investment and
large labour supply.
Shifting cultivation - peasant agricultural practice in Africa, Latin America and Asia where land
is tilled by a family until a time when its’ fertility is exhausted. Following this the family will
move to a new area leaving the old land to regain its’ fertility.
Subsistence farming - farming in which crop production, stock rearing, etc is mainly for the
families’ “own consumption” and is characterized by low productivity, risk and uncertainty.
Module Materials:
What do we mean by the terms rural development and agricultural transformation?

The Concept – Rural
i. In Geographic Terms: rural areas are frequently described as spatial units consisting of
small towns and villages, with population of less than 1,500 or 3,000 inhabitants
respectively, and their hinterlands (the areas surrounding a village or town and served
by that town)
ii. Economically: Rural areas especially in the developing countries consists of households
primarily engaged in primary production activities i.e. agriculture, which includes crop
production, livestock keeping, forestry, fishing and hunting)
iii. Sociologically: A rural area consists of communities in which rural social behaviour is
predominant i.e. predominance of traditional family values, and norms, where depend
on informal institutions.
Development as a Concept
Refers to the following:
i. Evolution: growth, maturation, expansion, enlargement, spread, progress; success.
ii. Forming: establishment, initiation, instigation, origination, invention, and generation.
iii. Occurrence, happening, circumstance, incident, situation, issue.
iv. Progress or advancement e.g. Poverty alleviation etc.
Development is therefore a process of developing or being developed.
With reference to rural development it therefore refers to a process of all the changes geared
towards improving the well-being of the rural community in a country.
Agricultural Transformation
Agriculture simply refers to crop production, livestock keeping, fishing, and forestry. The

majority of the poor people in the developing countries are engaged in subsistence agriculture
and still the largest proportion of GNP in most of the sub Saharan African countries is generated
by the agricultural sector. Transforming the agriculture of these countries could make
significant contribution to the economic development process of these countries.
Why study rural development and agricultural transformation?

i. Relatively large proportion of the population in the developing countries are
living in the rural areas
ii. Large proportion of the people in developing countries are still dependent on
agriculture for their livelihood
 Over 3 billion people in the developing world
 More than half of the population in L.A
 More than 75% of the population in Africa
 Over two thirds of the world’s poorest are people are also located in
rural areas and engaged in subsistence agriculture.
Studying rural development and agricultural transformation is therefore important for

understanding poverty, and causes of poverty and strategies to promote economic growth and
alleviate poverty.
What is Poverty?
 Until the 1990s, poverty was considered mainly in ‘material’ terms – as low
income or low levels of material wealth.
 More recently, vulnerability and multidimensional deprivation, especially of
basic capabilities such as health and education, have been emphasized as key aspects of
poverty.
 Chronic poverty is rarely the result of a single factor. Instead, combinations of,
and interactions between
 material poverty, (inadequate access to basic life necessities like food, clothing
and shelter)
 extreme capability deprivation (ill-health, lack of skills) and vulnerability (reflects
a household’s resilience in the face of shocks and the likelihood that a shock will
lead to a decline in well-being)
 The MDG criteria of 1 US$/Day is not adequate in defining poverty
Poverty dynamics – becoming poor, staying poor, and escaping poverty

Poverty is not a static condition. Assessments of changes in poverty over time generally
recognize five main poverty categories, under three main headings:
The chronically poor include

- The always poor, whose poverty score in each period is below a defined poverty
line
- The usually poor, whose mean poverty score over all periods is less than the

poverty line, but who are not poor in every period.
The transitory poor, who include:

- The fluctuating poor, who are poor in some periods but not in others, and have
with a mean poverty score around the poverty line;
- The occasionally poor, who have experienced at least one period in poverty;
although their mean poverty score is above the poverty line.
The non-poor
- With poverty scores in all periods above the poverty line
Role of Agriculture in Economic Development

Following the classic analysis of Kuznets (1964), the agricultural sector in developing countries
can be seen as being potentially capable of making four types of contribution to the national
overall economic growth and development:
1) Product Contribution: The expansion of the non-agricultural sector is strongly reliant

on domestic agriculture, not only for a sustained increase in the supply of food, but also
for raw materials used in the manufacturing sector such as textiles
 The highest rate of decline in the relative importance of agriculture in the
economy tends to be associated with the contribution of a relative high initial
product share ratio in favour non of the Non-A sector; a relative low rate of
agricultural growth and a relative high rate of non-agricultural growth
 The share of agriculture GDP declines over time as a consequence of economic
growth and development
 The share is inversely correlated with the level of economic development
measured by GNP per capital
 1960 to 1978:
 Bangladesh (a low income country)
share of growth rate fell from 33 to 22 per cent
 Japan (Industrialized country) from 5
to 1 percent
 Egypt (middle income country) from
20 to 11 percent
 The declining relative importance of
the agricultural sector is important for Long-term development. Many
developing countries have failed to avoid the trap of overlooking the
critical importance of domestic agriculture’s product contribution to the
maintenance of an adequate rate of economic growth in the short term.
Many developing countries have fallen into this trap by opting for a

strategy of rapid industrialization without parallel development in

agriculture.
1.1 Food Contribution:
 In most developing countries the domestic agricultural sector is the principal
source of food for consumption by non-agricultural sector workers.
 Diversification of the economy is therefore contingent upon domestic food
producers producing a surplus, in excess of their own subsistence, which is large
enough to feed a growing number of non-food producers
 Although, in principal, shortfalls in domestic food supplies can be met through by
expanding food imports, in practice such imports are frequently severely
constrained by the scarcity and high cost of foreign exchange
 Food supply and inflation: Because in most developing countries bottlenecks are
more characteristic than underutilized productive capacity due to deficient
demand, the effect of income augmenting policies, such as employment
creation, may lead to excess demand and inflation, rather than higher real
output.
1.2 Raw Material Contribution
 In many developing countries, the early stages of industrialization are marked by
a predominance of industries based on the processing of agricultural raw
materials. The supply of such raw materials is constrained by the bottlenecks in
the agricultural sector and there reducing the incentives of entrepreneurs to
invest in the agro-processing industries, (seasonality, due to lack of irrigation,
poor quality of agricultural products, transport bottlenecks etc. etc.)
1.3 Product Linkage between agriculture and other industries
1) Inter-industry linkage (which describes inter-sectoral interdependencies)
 Backward linkage measures the ration of intermediate input purchases from
other industries to a particular industry’s total value of production
 Forward linkage measures the ration of intermediate input sales to other
industries to a particular industry’s total sales (including sales to the final
consumer)
 Total linkage is the sum of backward and forward linkages
 Thus a hypothetical industry which purchases nothing from other industries and
sold the whole of its output directly for final consumption would register zero
coefficients for its backward, forward and backward linkages
 It has been commonly held that as a primary industry, agriculture in most
developing countries lacks backward linkages by definition:

 also because much agricultural production goes directly for home consumption
or for export, without intermediate processing forward linkages are likely to be
weak
2) Market Contribution: Because of the strong agrarian bias of the economy during the
early stages of economic growth, the agricultural population inevitably forms a
substantial proportion of the home market for the products of domestic industry,
including the market for producer goods (fertilizers, pesticides, tools and implements) as
well as consumer goods (clothes, furniture, household utensils, building materials).
3) Factor Contribution: Because of the relative importance of the agriculture in the
economy inevitably declines with economic growth and development, agriculture is
seen as a principal source of capital for investment, elsewhere in the economy.
 Thus the development process involves the transfer of surplus capital from
agriculture to the non-agricultural sector. Agriculture is virtually the sole
“domestic” source of savings and investments during the initial stages of
development. Agriculture is likely to benefit indirectly from non-agricultural-type
investments such as the improvement of communication and provision of public
utilities
 Forced transfer of capital through
government intervention-Scissor mechanism: market intervention (China
and Japan)
 Market transfer of capital from the
agriculture to the non-agricultural sector which occurs when the
following conditions are fulfilled:
 Farmers must sell part of their output outside their own sector,
i.e. market surplus of agricultural products must exist
 Farmers must be net savers, i.e. they must consume less than they
produce
 Farmers’ savings must exceed their investments in agriculture
 If these conditions are fulfilled, the agricultural sector will have a
balance payment surplus with the rest of the economy
 Similarly, development also entails the transfer of surplus labour from
agriculture to the non-agricultural sector. These depends on the following:
 The size of any “reservoir”
redundant agricultural labour i.e. the rate at which labour can be made
redundant by productivity enhancement
 The “quality” of rural migrants as
potential industrial workers (or the cost of industrial training)

 The supplies and price of non-labour

inputs and other components of the demand for industrial labour
4) Balance of Oversees payment—Foreign exchange contribution: Domestic agriculture is
capable of contributing beneficially to the balance of oversees payments either by
augmenting the country’s export earnings or by expanding the production of agricultural
import substitutes.
Linking Development Theory and Rural Development over time

Changing perceptions of development over time, and the implication of that perception on
rural transformation
Pre-colonial period
 Development began to acquire precise meaning for western societies after the
World War II
 The key issue was the likely political and economic trajectories of
‘underdeveloped’ or ‘developing’ countries then emerging from colonial rule
 Initially in the 1940s in Asia (including India, Ceylon, Pakistan, Nepal and
Indonesia)
 And from the mid 1950s, numerous countries in sub-Saharan African countries
(Sudan 1956, Ghana 19570, Tanzania 1961 etc.
The 1950s – 1960s

Modernization Theory:
 Dominated the think of Western governments, international financial institutions (IFIs),
and analysts
 The common starting point was that the problem of poverty and human development
would solved by adequate investments in physical capital and infrastructure
 However, despite the injection of huge quantities of foreign aid in many developing
countries, many did not see much in the way of development
o Global poverty persisted
o This outcome showed that development outcome depends on more than
sufficient injections of capital
o What the government did in policy terms with the assets at their disposal
o Necessary policy shifts to facility access to essential health care and education
did not occur
The 1970s and 1980s

 The development disappointments in the 1950s and 1960s, led in the 1970s to a new
development concern: a shift to a ‘basic needs’ strategy = (Focusing on building human
capital)
 The emphasis was on what is considered to be the foundation of development:
o To ensure that all people have basic necessities including
 Clean water
 Primary health care and

 Elementary education,
 However the supply of these necessities were dependent on foreign aid and loans and
could not be sustained during the economic crisis in the late 1970s early 1980s (Drought
and oil price increase)
 In the 1980s the aim of building “Human Capital” was supplanted by an ideologically-
driven development shift in development thinking of the key-aid-providers: western
governments and IFIs
o Structural Adjustment Policies
 Downsizing of developmental role of
the state and an increased faith in the market forces and economic
efficiency to bring about broad-based economic growth to deal with the
problem of poverty and underdevelopment in the developing world
 This way of thinking reflected the
intellectual dominance in the 1980s of neo-liberalism, (an economic and
political philosophy ideologically underpinning the pro-market ideology
and monetarist ideas of influential governments
 Margaret Thatcher in Britain (1979-1990) and Ronald
Reagan in the USA (1980-1988)
 The concept of the neo-liberalism emphasized that, developmentally, the state’s role
should be downgraded and diminished – while that of private capitalists and
entrepreneurs should be upgraded and augmented
 Under pressure from the Western governments and the IFIs many developing countries
were encouraged to put in place neo-liberal policies
The 1990s and early 2000s

 Failure of the Washington Consensus model
 Argument is that only governments have the power to alter prevailing socio-economic
realities trough the application of appropriate policies and programs, and by
constructing appropriate institutions
 In other words the government is not very good in allocating scarce resources fairly;
only governments can do that, and they need a range of appropriate institutions to
accomplish their goals
 The ability to that or not is strongly linked to the varying amounts of pressure on
government by competing social interests
 Focus was on:
o Promotion of labour intensive growth through economic openness and
investment in infrastructure and
o General provision of basic services, especially basic health care and education
In all these, the developing countries seem not to have any internal strategies to solve their
own internal problems, but rather depend on the externally prescribed policies.

Agrarian Reform and Rural Development in Tanzania

With more than 80 percent of the population in Tanzania living in the rural areas, agriculture
forms the backbone of the country’s economy. $6 percent of the country’s GDP and 60 percent
of its foreign trade come from agriculture. The industrial sector too to a late extent depends on
raw materials from agriculture. However, Tanzanian agriculture is faced with the problem of
availability and access to modern technology. 70 percent of the farmers still use the hand hoe,
20 percent use animal ploughs and only 10 percent use tractors. Despite the fact that irrigation
could raise the farm output in Tanzania and reduce rural poverty, this technology is not
developed. Out of the 29.4 million hectares suitable for irrigation, only 250,000 hectares are
under irrigation.
Recently the country has joined the open door policy (liberalization) and thus has begun
aggressively top promote medium and large scale commercial farming, a move that is certainly
to affect land ownership, environmental management and rural development initiatives.
Agrarian transformation was first initiated in the Arusha Declaration (1967) emphasizing
communal ownership of land and thus nationalized the large farms and put them under
parastatal organization ran by the government. To implement the declaration another
programme called villagization was launched in 1973. In this programme 55 percent of the
population was resettled in organised villages where land was both communally and private
owned. This resettlement scheme was initiated with the aim of providing economic and social
services to the majority of the people.
However, despite the good intentions of villagization programme failed. As time went by
several other problems cropped up. These include high demand for grazing land, environmental
concerns as a result of land degradation, development of land market which created fear of
land grabbing by rich people, women’s concern about land allocation in favour of men,
concerns by investors and financial institutions over the need to have land as collateral,
development and expansion of urban areas and population pressure resulting into land conflict
in some areas.
Due to the above problems there was a need to develop land policy by the government in 1995.
The policy aimed at ensuring fair land acquisition and ownership, providing avenue for every
Tanzanian citizen to access and own land, to ensure that existing rights to land particularly
those owning land without legal documents were issued with legal status, putting limit to the
amount of land that an individual can own, improving and clarifying the way land is managed
and how disputes over land are resolved and lastly to ensure proper management of land and
its conservation.
In Tanzania the land belongs to all Tanzanians, thus it is a public property held in trust by the
President on their behalf. In order to make sure of security of land tenure, Tanzania developed
three laws, the Land Act No. 4 of 1999, Village land Act N0. 5 of 1999 and the Land Disputes Act
N0. 2 of 2002. The general purpose of these laws is to make sure that the land policy objectives

are achieved. Tanzania has three types of land ownership, which are reserved land, village land
and general land. Reserved is the land that falls under wildlife, forests, national parks, etc.
Village land is the land inside the boundaries of villages. This land is under the control of the
village councils and village assemblies through the Village Land Act the two organs distribute
and manage the land inside the village. The general land is under the management of the
Commission of Lands. Despite the existence of the Land policy and Land Laws, there is lack of
awareness of the existence of the policy and land laws by most land users especially the
farmers and pastoralists resulting into frequent conflicts between the two communities, there
is mismanagement of land and water resources and there is the problem of land rights being
extended to people who already own land without serious attempts (clear guidelines and
arrangements) to make sure that the landless especially the youth acquire land. In Tanzania
there are no land banks or institutions to provide information on land availability for those in
need, except for large investors, there are no financial institutions to support the poor farmers
to develop the land and the problem of lack of technology still persists and negatively affects
land management.
Ujamaa
Tanzania got its independence in 1961 and six years later it took a unique path of development
intending to build a self-sufficient nation, with the objective of fulfilling basic human needs of
its people as a priority. Nyerere saw this could only be achieved through rural development
based on communal farming and democratic input of peasants and workers in the country’s
political and economic planning. In the 1967 Arusha Declaration Nyerere had four goals he
wanted to achieve; egalitarian distribution, self-sufficiency, democracy and satisfaction of the
citizen’s basic needs. Combination of these goals reflect Nyerere’s concept of Ujamaa, African
socialism which emphasized on communal work and communal gains.
Nyerere’s ujamaa was to have democratic base of direct involvement of peasants and workers
and that is why the elite control of TANU (the sole Tanzanian political party) was replaced with
peasants in 1967 and in 1972 he initiated decentralization of the government so as to have a
direct link with the people. Public control was extended to industries, with massive
nationalization of banks, buildings, large farms and industries in the early 1960s. Consistent
with Nyerere’s non-coercive plan, the owners of these industries were compensated for the
losses. Tanzania adopted a cynical stance on foreign id arguing that it always comes with strings
attached, thus Nyerere aimed at raising most of its development funding internally. In the first
three years of Arusha declaration, the foreign share of development funds decreased from 78
percent to 39 percent. Nyerere went on to switch budget allocation from concentrating on
large scale urban hospitals to preventive medicine for rural areas. Finally Ujamaa integrated
Pan-African global linkage and self-reliance into Tanzanian development strategy. Nyerere’s
policy was very clear in the context of Pan-African struggle for political, economic and social
liberation, therefore he wanted to cooperate with other African states to bring about African
unity. He categorically condemned neo-colonial African rulers who instituted oppressive
regimes or perpetuated Euro-centric structures ill-suited to African values.

Ujamaa Villages
Nyerere took over Tanzania with a geographically-dispersed agricultural homesteads that made
it difficult to provide economic and social services. Ujamaa villages therefore aimed at
consolidating these scattered population into optimal groups of 250 families where they could
engage in community-based farming, with each member contributing his/her work and
receiving proportional benefit. Villages were tied to district and national party representatives
to ensure that these villages get input in the allocation of resources. Village assemblies included
all members over 18 years of age and were meant to be forums for open discussion and
criticism of village operations. Nyerere hoped that through education, people would see and
adopt communal farming as an efficient method of production.
Education
Villagization was meant to occur without the use of force but through educational measures.
With this in mind Nyerere called for reform of Tanzanian educational system, replacing the
British colonial education with curriculum that addressed African history, Tanzanian culture,
civic responsibility and practical communal farming skills. The educational plan reflected Ujama
principles. After nationalization of private schools in 1969, limited capital for investment
manadated that schools become self-sufficient units. Thus Nyerere advocated that
schollchildren participate in communal farming, agricultural planning and maintenance of
facilities as a vital component of primary education. Adhering to the principle of egalitarianism,
students enrolled in secondary schools were called upon to build social infrastructures as part
of their vacation periods, rather than remaining separate from their communities. Nyerere also
encouraged critical thinking and analysis as a prime objective of primary education so as to lay
foundation for worthwhile democratic participation of all the informed citizens. Classes were
taught in Kiswahili, the post-colonial national language, English remained to ensure that
students could participate in foreign affairs. Education targeted adult literacy, nutritional skills
and technological diffusion. The adult literacy rate increased from 33 percent in 1967 to 73
percent in 1978. Night classes were offered to encourage adult participation in agricultural
skills, water storage, food preservation and crafty. There were campaigns to encourage good
nutrition, training seminars and pamphlets to teach how to construct intermediate
technological innovations like wheelbarrows.
Problems with Plan Implementation

Tanzania’s poverty level and its insignificant place in the broader global community made the
implementation of Ujamaa difficult, especially in maintaining integrity and self-reliance amid
internal divisions, resource inadequacy and foreign pressures. Though Nyerere rejected the
emerging inequalities in wealth and power, stratification had either emerged or aggravated in
the context of Ujamaa between many sectors in the society, such as urban versus rural, political
officials versus peasants, race versus race and even male versus female.

Elimination of the urban-rural income gap was Nyerere major concern in rural development
agenda. He employed mechanisms such as urging labourers to adjust their wage demands to
the limits of the economy; in 1964 there was nationalization and consolidation of labour
unions, and progressive taxation which took more revenue from urban areas and luxury
purchase. All these were attempts to reduce rural-urban inequalities. Nyerere was true to his
convictions when he stood firm to Parliament demands for elite tax privileges in 1974 until the
members backed down. Despite all these, in 1980 rural farmers had only 50 percent the
standard of life of urban wage earners. In terms of educational training, Nyerere approach was
to instill ideology in TANU’s leadership which then would disseminate to the masses. However,
qualified political leaders and agricultural educators did not always disseminate that
knowledge. Most of the time bureaucracy ruled from above without taking into account
people’s input against the principles of democracy that Nyerere wanted in place. This showed a
clear distinction between the policy makers and the workers.
Flexibility in village organization also showed that some villages operated according to direct
democracy while others were ruled by political elites. Further village disparities came as a result
of unequal distribution of technology to a small number of Ujamaa villages over others. This
uneven allocation became a prime determinant for village success in production. In addition
though women performed 60 to 80 percent of total agricultural work in Tanzania in 1978, men-
run cash crops farms were the ones receiving most technological support from the state. Men
also tended to control the planned use of surpluses and the direction of village economic policy.
Slow progress toward meeting numerical village goals motivated officials to make villagization
compulsory in 1973. Unpopular in itself, this decision was dangerous, since it resembled the
Euro-colonial attempts of the 1940s to consolidate citizens into villages in order to introduce
cash crops. So after few instances of forced villagization between 1973 and 1978, TANU
overcompensated for lost morale by explicitly endorsing private plot cultivation within villages,
a practice which was counter to socialist revolutionary development.
Furthermore the eagerness to establish villages made officials not to take peasant input in
terms of land choice and settlement. Not only did this undemocratic practice aggravate lack of
consent but it made officials move people to less fertile areas and regions prone to flooding and
to areas where ecological resources were depleted by dense population of settlers. By 1980, 90
percent of Tanzania’s rural population was condensed into Ujamaa villages, but the vagueness
of TANU’s policy and lack of management skills presented opportunity for authoritarian control.
The inherent poverty contributed to inability to strictly control wages and increase prices with
an impoverished consumer base limited industrial profit. This strained purchasing power of
Tanzania consumers created a low demand for domestically produced goods. Poverty was
inflamed by the combination of world inflationary pressure in the early 1970s with OPEC-
induced oil price hike and Tanzanian drought of 1974. Negative balance of payments, 25
percent malnutrition rate among children under the age of 5 and a strain on socialist ideological
commitment seemed as an exercise in futility at that point in time. Tanzania was not equipped
to handle this shortage internally. With population pressures increasing at a rate close to the
production growth rate and terms of trade deteriorating, Tanzania had to resort to more
foreign aid in the 1980's. Despite the fact that the country badly needed aid Tanzania displayed

a remarkable amount of audacity in criticizing the foreign policy of Western countries

(particularly USA).
The World Bank also contributed to Tanzanian dependency, undercutting Tanzania's choice to
develop rural domestic agriculture before its exports industry. Until 1975, no World Bank funds
had ever been allocated to aid food crop production. World Bank projects also tended to set
aside more resources for large-scale industry than for Ujamaa villages (explicitly the center-
piece of Tanzania's socialist economic development revolution). In addition, World Bank
projects were often inappropriately capital-intensive, unsustainable for average farmers and
consequently damaging to the land. Many World Bank development activities established
separate administrative structures thereby contributing to the considerable duplication of
bureaucratic efforts within Tanzania (Nantambu, 2007).
However with a population of 13 million people in 1973, Tanzania managed to maintain a large
degree of social solidarity among its more than 100 different ethnic and religious groups.
Through deliberate cohesive tactics such as adopting a national language and integrating
educational staff, Tanzania as a state was able minimize racial divisions.

Food Security
In a global level, capacity exists to produce food for all people in the world. However, this
requires that an increase in food production should take place particularly in the low-income
countries. The lack of adequate incomes and purchasing power of large parts of the population
slows down world agricultural growth. Economic liberalization and privatization are major
features of Structural Adjustment Policies (SAPs), which aim at the rationalization of fiscal and
monetary policies and the creation of a macro-economic environment favorable to economic
growth. SAPs focus on the reduction of public spending and price supports, liberalization of
markets, reduction and elimination of agricultural and food subsidies and the elimination of
marketing and transportation controls. These measures are likely to have a negative impact on
small and poor farmers. Cuts in social services and the increase in food prices adversely affect
the more vulnerable parts of the population, particularly women and children, and place a
disproportionate burden of work on women who must make up for the services that have been
cut.
Paradoxically, the rural people who produce the world's food also make up the majority of the
world's poor and are among those most vulnerable to food insecurity (ILO, 1990).
Approximately 70 percent of the world's poor are women. The trends towards economic and
trade liberalization and privatization which are intended to boost agricultural production and
the economy may well result in increasing food insecurity among poor farmers and other
vulnerable population groups, unless measures are taken to ensure equitable access to food by
all.
Definition of Food Security
Amartya Sen has been involved with the problem of paradigm shift in the early 1980s. This
brought focus to the issue of access and entitlement to food. Food insecurity is no longer seen
as simply as a failure of agriculture to produce sufficient food at the national level, but instead
as a failure of livelihoods to guarantee access to sufficient food at the household level. In 1996
Rome Declaration on World Food Security, food security was defined as food that is available at
all times, to which all persons have means of access that is nutritional adequate in terms of
quantity, quality and variety, and is acceptable within the given culture (Clover, 2003).
Availability, access and affordability are therefore all elements of food security. The failure to
tackle the problem of food insecurity is combination of both failure of understanding as well as
failure of interventions, for wrong diagnosis will always result into wrong treatment. For
example if we take food insecurity as lack of enough food, the tendency would be to import
more food or ask for food aid, but if there are places that are inaccessible in the country, that
food will not reach there. If the population is poverty stricken, it cannot afford the imported
food thus in spite of the food availability, people will still suffer due to lack of accessibility and
affordability. Food insecurity in Africa is a result of a combination of a number of factors such as
natural hazards, conflicts, structural poverty, HIV/AIDS politics and globalization.
1. Natural hazard

Regular drought in some parts of Africa, high variability in rainfall and temperature are major
problems. The problem of Africa does not end with drought but also floods. Environmental
factors impact heavily on agriculture, and agriculture in turn has a substantial impact on the
environment. There are increasing reports of land degradation, deforestation, water logging
and salinisation contributing to the declining ability of Africa to feed itself. Lesotho is a case in
point. Agriculture in this small country faces a catastrophic future, with average farm yields
having declined by more than two-thirds since the 1970s. Soil erosion is spreading fast, and soil
fertility is deteriorating even further. During the course of the last few months of 2002, the
start of summer, Lesotho experienced un-seasonal weather in the form of frost, cyclones and
hail (Clover, 2003).
2. Conflicts
It is argued that virtually every country that has suffered famine in the past 20 years has
suffered a war at the same time; this is particularly true of famines in the 1990s. While Africa
has experienced many droughts, they were generally managed with reasonable efficiency. It
has been the combination of war and drought that has caused large-scale suffering and death.
Of the 25 countries in Africa facing food emergencies in 2003, ten are currently experiencing
civil strife, and four are emerging from conflicts. At best agricultural production is interrupted
and even devastated. Other economic outcome include disruption of trade and aid flow, price
changes for basic commodities, closure of markets, destitution and displacement. At times
people are displaced by force or threat of force, villages and farms being burned down as well
as systematically plundered, preventing the population from growing or harvesting crops. In
addition there are also environmental degradation and competition for natural resources.
Conflicts are more likely to deflect scarce resources into military budgets (to feed armies and
purchase of weapons) away from real development needs resulting into collapsed
infrastructures making some places inaccessible. Famine can be a by-product of war or an
instrument of war as at times a certain group can be more vulnerable as a result of deliberate
indifference or even victimization by the government, Angola and Sudan offer evidence to this.
3. Structural Poverty
Nearly half of the population of sub-Saharan Africa lives below the international poverty line
thus inability to purchase food. Tackling hunger cannot be solved by simply producing more
food, famine often occur even at places with plenty of food. Most people buy food rather than
produce it and some produce and sell it, in the hope of buying again when the need arises.
When harvests fail people resort to selling off livestock and assets to finance food purchase but
simultaneously food prices rise sharply and livestock price fall.
4. HIV/AIDS
Sub-Saharan Africa is mostly hit by this pandemic with 9 percent of the population infected. All
dimensions of food security (availability, accessibility and affordability) are affected where the
HIV/AIDS prevalence is high. Farming skills are being lost, agricultural development efforts are
failing, rural livelihoods are disintegrating, productive capacity to work the land is declining and

household earnings are shrinking. The households are significantly affected and the African
safety nets such as extended families are not able to cope with this double burden of care. The
relationship of HIV/AIDS to food security is bi-directional, that is vulnerability and food security
feed into the very risk behaviour that drives the HIV/AIDS pandemic, and the impact of
HIV/AIDS exacerbates food insecurity, which again feeds into risk.
5. Economic Crisis
A number of countries in sub-Saharan Africa are plagued with poor macro-economic

performance. This can be at times attributed to failure in the political accountability of
governments, and even political interference as it is the case of Zimbabwe recently.
6. Politics
Politics hold centre stage in both current regional dramas in sub-Saharan Africa. In Zimbabwe,
failure of governance, both through lack of accountability and an opposition to democratisation
and in particular, the way in which the land reform programme has been instrumentalised and
implemented, has resulted in a severe undermining of the previously robust agricultural
economy. Elsewhere, in Eritrea, for example, parts remain inaccessible due to landmines, and
since the war with Ethiopia ended, the government has become increasingly repressive. Despite
the ending of the civil war in Angola there are several areas in which people cannot be accessed
because of landmines and collapsed infrastructure (Clover 2003).
7. Globalization and the Role of World Trade Organization (WTO)
The adverse impact of structural adjustment and liberalisation policies on food security and
agriculture, along with persisting trade barriers, the overall downward trend of official
development assistance (ODA), agricultural subsidies in the North, and debt burdens in Africa
are just some of the issues highlighting the need for international co-operation as an
instrument for addressing food insecurity.
The advent of structural adjustment programmes (SAPs) in the early 1980s, which were
presented as the panacea for all economic ills, have contributed to a marked increase in rural
poverty, and an increase in vulnerability to external shocks. Between 1960 and 1980, before
SAPs, income per head in the region grew by a third. Between 1980 and 1997 it fell by a
quarter. Part of the problem was that higher income from export crops did not materialise. In
mid-2001 the price of every major traded agricultural commodity, with the exception of sugar,
was substantially lower, by way of example, than in mid-1998.
Market reforms put forward by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) as
the ideologically correct development path rejected notions of government intervention. As a
result, much of the region was compelled to reduce its interventions in the economy, a move
that included ceasing the subsidisation of agricultural inputs such as fertiliser and privatising
the commodity boards that fixed producer prices and collected farmers’ produce. Ironically
these handicaps have been further compounded by policies in the North; at the same time that

African farmers have been told they can no longer have free seeds or fertilisers, the EU and the
US have maintained and actually sharply increased subsidies and support for agriculture. US
farmers are receiving an average $20,000 a year in subsidies; soon to be increased by 70
percent and EU farmers receive $16,000. A downstream effect is that of subsidised surpluses
which undercut the prices of African foods in their own markets. It is something of an anomaly
that rich countries heavily subsidise a declining agricultural sector, which, at maturity,
contributes less than five per cent to GDP.
Since the mid-1990s the developed countries have made promises to phase out protectionist
policies and to scale down agricultural subsidies. Despite these, tariff barriers in rich countries
are higher for poor countries than for industrialised countries and Northern governments have
increased agricultural subsidies; countries representing four-fifths of the world’s population are
now left with less than one-fifth of world exports. The practice and rules of international trade
play a key role in achieving world food security and fostering agriculture. Free trade is not good
for everyone and African countries face huge barriers in establishing an agro-export economy
to trade their way out of poverty because of tariff barriers and produce dumping by European
and US producers. Trade rounds ostensibly benefit the whole world by enhancing
competitiveness, expanding the marketplace to increase trade volume and enhancing the value
of the goods we trade. These assumptions are based on fundamentally flawed principles. Trade
has the potential to contribute to food security, but in practice two sets of rules have been
enforced: one for those allowed to and responsible for distorting the market through tariff and
non-tariff barriers, and those—the developing countries—who were not and are now legally
prohibited from doing so. It was reported at the June 2002 WFS that “OECD (Organisation for
Economic Co-operation and Development) countries provide a billion dollars a day in support to
their own agriculture sector, six times more than all development assistance” and also that the
annual loss of income to developing countries (Clover 2003).
Review:
In this module we have looked at the path that Tanzania took after independence, a way that
aimed at building economy based on self-reliance and egalitarian system. Though economically
it was not a very successful endeavour, socially it was very successful in creating solidarity
among the Tanzanians.
Discussion Activities:
Define the concept ‘food security’. Outline the main causes of food insecurity in Africa today
and particularly show how politics have impacted on efforts to address the problem.
Resources:
Clover, J. (2003) Food Security in Sub-Saharan Africa. African Security Review, Vol. 12 N0. 1. You can
read this article at Food Security in Sub-Saharan Africa -Jenny Clover.pdf
Foster, P. and Maghimbi, S. (eds) (1992) The Tanzanian Peasantry: Economy in Crisis. London: Avebury.

Kuznets, S., (1964), ‘Economic Growth and the Contribution of Agriculture’ in Eicher, C.K., and Witt,
Mbilinyi, A.C. (1998) “The Green Revolution and Sub-Saharan Africa.” In the Tanzania Journal of
Development Studies; Vol. 1 No. 1.
Mpangala, G.P. (2000) Major Issues in Tanzanian Economic History II: State Policies and the Duration
of Transformation of Peasant Agriculture through A Hundred Years, 1891-1990. Dar es Salaam:
Institute of Kiswahili Research.
Mhamba, R. (2007) Rural Development and Agricultural Transformation. Unpublished Class Notes.
Nantambu, K. (2007) Tanzania’s Socialist Revolution: What Went Wrong? at Tanzania's Socialist
Revolution -Kwame Nantambu.pdf
Tulahi, C.R and Hingi, P.M. (2006) Agrarian Reform and Rural Development in Tanzania. A Country
paper presented at the International Conference on Agrarian Reform and Rural Development, Porto
Alegre, Brazil. You can read this paper at Agrarian Reform and Rural Development in Tanzania -
Tulahi and Hingi.pdf
URT (1999) National Land Policy. Dar es Salaam: Government Printer.
Wangwe, S. (2005) Culture, Identity and Social Integration: The Tanzania Experience in Social
Integration at Rural Development in Tanzania.pdf
TOPIC 2: SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY AND INDUSTRIALIZATION

An Overview:
Africa has a comparative advantage on agricultural products which are negatively affected by
weather change and advancement in technology making each product have a substitute, e.g.
sisal has a substitute in manila rope, coffee on bio-coffee beans, etc. However, the road on
science and technology is blocked by high price to be paid on patent rights and lack of good
investors who could transfer technology. This module will walk us through history from
independence to present time in the road of science, technology and industrialization in
Tanzania; what has been done, is being done and how viable are the strategies.
Introduction:
The post-independence period was perceived by African countries as an opportunity to develop
their economies. Science, Technology and Industrialization were perceived as integral parts of
the development agenda. Industrialization was expected to facilitate transformation of
economic structure from predominantly agricultural economies to modern industrial
economies. The share of industry in the economy was expected to rise, generate opportunities

for employment, raise levels of productivity and raise incomes and standards of living of
majority of the population. In the external sector, it was envisaged that industrialization would
bring about restructuring of the predominantly primary sector to a more diversified export
sector in which exports of industrial products would increasingly play an important role.
Industrial exports were associated with dynamic products in which specialization and
technological learning were attained. On the import side two concerns were raised. First, the
balance of payments problems were associated with deteriorating terms of trade. Second,
economic independence was sought through substitution of imported goods by domestic
production of those goods. These two considerations, drawing from the Latin American
experience constituted the logic of the import substitution industrialization (ISI) model that the
post independence African countries adopted. The failures of the ISI model and the
introduction of the structural adjustment programmes (SAP) underpinned by the neoclassical
framework, led to the strong focus on import liberalization and almost a “no industrial policy”
posture. Import liberalization was intended to provide corrective signals and incentives to the
manufacturing and other sectors, increase the level of competition and technical efficiency, and
stimulate factor productivity. The results so far show that the expected benefits of the new
policy regime under SAP have not materialized.
Course Materials:
SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
Introduction
Science and technology are very much part of our everyday living. It is technology that shaped
up the cities, towns we live in, constructed our house, the bed on which we sleep, cars, trains
that deliver us to work, etc. Technology is used to improve the general standard of society and
is today seen as the basis for economic and social development. Being poor and
underdeveloped, developing countries in particular embraced science and technology with such
vigour that they see it as the answer to all of their problems and the ladder to use to join the
developed world. Many economist theorists believe that the growing technology gap between
developed and developing countries is one of the major factors in the growing gap in economic
development. They suggest that acquisition of modern technology by the developing countries
will bridge the economic gap between the developing and developed countries. A look at
history indicates the significant of Science and Technology in the process economic and social
development especially the industrialized world.
It can be observed that technological development can be considered to have impact in

numerous areas. These are such as productivity, trading performance, employment,
investment, income distribution, quality of goods, economic growth, inflation, the
environment, industrial structure and security and defence. Those countries that utilized
science and technology effectively in the 20th century have undergone fast economic growth
and structural change. Technological advancement has become so important that it has

become major determinants of the level and pattern of economic development and
determination of international competitiveness.
Though science and technology benefit social and economic growth in the world, but it fails to
provide solution to major world problems in particular those of mass poverty, starvation and
international conflict. Scientific and technological capabilities have become additional
instruments of control, domination and exploitation. Therefore, it is crucial for developing
countries such as Tanzania to effectively understand and facilitate policies that will impact on
the process and technological development. A key question that we hope to examine today is
why Tanzania and other African countries have been unable to make effective use of science
and technology?
Definitions
Science can be defined as a systematic, objective search for understanding of the natural and
human world. Science is a body of knowledge, formed through continuous inquiry. A body of
knowledge developed by a culture that provides methods or means to control the environment,
extracts resources, produces and services and improve the quality of life.
Technology can be defined as application of scientific knowledge to solve practical problems

and achieve human goals. In other words technology is know how while science is know-why.
Science produces knowledge and technology helps to produce wealth development by using
knowledge produced by science.
Society refers simply to the whole complex relationship and institutions within which people
live. Science can be said to be the generator of the ideas while technology is their material
embodiment. Without science, technology is not sustainable and technology indicates the
presence of science. While science gives human beings a logical framework of their physical and
social world, technology equips them with tools, equipment etc. with which to respond to the
challenge of the world. Technology involves not only the systematic application of scientific and
other organized knowledge of practical tasks, but also the social and economic atmosphere
within which application has to take place. Technology considers socio-economical and political
context within which such application has to take place.
The Relationship between Science, Technology and Society

Science, technology and society are interdependent. Interdependent in the sense that on the
one hand knowledge generated by the scientific enterprise contributes to the development of
technologies, and new technology influence the scientific enterprise in determining the
research problem and the means employed to solve them. Technological development leads to
improved methods and instruments for scientific research. But on the other hand science and
technology have influence on the social development throughout history at all levels of the
society. Technology which goes together with science influences the quality of life and the way
people/society act and interacts locally, nationally and globally. Technological change is

accompanied by social, economical and political changes that may be beneficial or detrimental
to society.
Technologies also arise in response to cultural values e.g. upper and middle class populations in
urban areas consider mobile phone as a matter of necessity. Technology is often identified in
terms of hardware and software. While hardware aspect of technology refers to technology
embodied in machines and process, the software aspect refers to skills, know-how and
procedures for performing practical tasks. Technology has to do with certain kinds of
knowledge. It is embodied on the brain of people through part of it as a machine.
Technology plays a political role in the society, a role of intimately related to the distribution of
power and exercised of social control. The implication of this thesis is that one can only
understand the nature of technology developed in any society by relating it to the patterns of
production, consumption and general social activity than maintain the interest of politically
dominant sections of the society.
Factors for the Development of Science and Technology in a Country

1. Technological Transfer
This is a process that goes beyond the mere allocation of machinery from one place to
another. It is a deeper process which involves the disembodiment of knowledge vested
in the technology at different stages in order to develop both hardware and software
technology. Technology is said to have been transferred when nationals within a given
firm or industry have developed the ability to operate the industry successful. Successful
operation implies the capability of carrying out complex of functions of technologies
necessary for the conduct of the industry. It implies the existence of problem solving
capability. Bell (1985) notes that 30 years of enthusiastic pursuit of transfer of
technology in the Developing World have not decisively generated the desired results of
increased wealth in the Developing Countries. Although a few countries have achieved
some increased in their wealth, poverty is still overwhelming in most countries.
Present terms of transfer in Tanzania and other African countries appear not to provide
and to link the technology to viable development project. Certain factors are required to
make sure of a successful transfer of technology to the Developing Countries. These
factors are:
a) Availability of people with basic training (human resource) in the field is essential for
successful transfer of technology.
b) Precondition is also the question of legal and administrative framework of science

and technology policy in the host country. This is to ensure that importation,
transfer and assimilation of technology take place.
c) Political will and effective leadership which will oversee the whole process of
technological transfer development.

These factors are not yet in place in most African countries making the process of
technology transfer to be obstacle to sustainable social economic development. Indeed,
it is our contention that importation of technology has emerged as one of the various
modes of domination through which African economies are being effectively drawn to
the international capitalist system.
2. Technological Capability
Technological capability can exist at the level of the firm, industry and the country. It
consists of identifying the most relevant technology for the particular purpose, to
acquire the possible terms and once acquired to assimilate the technology internally.
This includes the ability to create innovations internally as well as market them
successfully.
3. Human Resource Development
Human resource development is a process of building up knowledge, working abilities,

the creative capabilities and the attitudes of all the people in a given sector or country.
Human resources include skills, expertise and experience. Scholars like Farrel (1979)
identified two kinds of skills- static and dynamic skills. Static skills refer to the kind of
knowledge that enables the possessor to carry out certain routine tasks and functions
successfully. The possessors of dynamic technological skills understand the specific
principles governing their work, and as such are capable of improving, modifying and
changing it to suit circumstances. This dynamic technological skills lead to the capacity
to innovate and invent. Most African countries lack both dynamic and static skills
because of inability to build up domestic technological capability. Most of the projects in
these countries do not facilitate the growth and development of dynamic skills.
4. Research and Development (R & D)
In order to make science and technology acquire and obtain homage, there is a need for
research and development. We need to have basic research, oriented basic research,
applied research, etc. development is a systematic use of basic and applied research
directed to the introduction of the new material, device, products, systems and process
or improvement of existing one. Designing and construction of prototypes and pilot
programmes would also be covered under development. It is argued that R & D
establishment is necessary component of technological capability. It generates new
knowledge that eventually contributes to development of technology. The creation of R
& D skills and facilities are in our view an important element of technology and policy
and development. R & D in production design, product performance, manufacturing and
process technology and in the basic science and engineering are needed for absorption
of foreign technology and know-how and also to develop indigenous technology. R & D
is important link in the process of assimilating, adopting and developing technology. It is
argued that the need for technological infrastructure in order for R & D to develop is
necessary. Infrastructures are the support systems which are necessary for the
transferred technology to function effectively. These include hardware, technological

education, the capability to perform R & D work and the ability to maintain the given
technology.
5. Technological Innovation
Technological Innovation is the local production systems, which are definable as

qualitatively different from those already in existence. Innovation is closely linked to
research and development in the sense that both create new knowledge to improve the
existing technology and creation of new technology. The workers with their skills and
experience are the one that make innovation capability through gaining intellectual
skills, the acquired knowledge and know-how and problem solving competencies.
Knowledge is the essential element of innovation. Innovation is based on adoptions and
improvement in imported technology and the generation of indigenous technology. The
process of innovation should eventually lead to technological mastery. This too is
missing in Africa.
Science, Technology and Development in the Developing World
Technical Dependency of the Developing World

Developing World and Sub-Saharan Africa in particular is technological dependent. They are
continuous and systematically reliant on imported technologies from abroad. If we look closely
we will realize that all hardware technology in Developing Countries are imports, little is
designed and manufactured in the region. Much of the imported technology is through loans
and grants, Developing Countries do not produce technology and also they do not purchase
using their own resources. Developing Countries do not control and manage technology. The
actual control is in the hand of the owner of technology and these are the ones who produce,
give loans and grants. The increasing debt burden of African countries is linked to acquisition of
technology through loans and grants. Most of this technology imported has been found to be
inappropriate to sustainable development and is a factor for the increase of dependency and
underdevelopment of Africa.
A nation is considered to be technological dependent if it is:
 Incapable of planned adaptation to technological change
 Incapable of manufacturing its strategic hardware
However, a country can import technology without being dependent if is able to modify and
adapt through technological activity in order to make it suitable to local requirements and to fit
a pattern of internally generated growth. Whereby the technological dependence, which is
imported, constitutes the major sources of technology being adopted without adaptation and
modification internally. This results into no existence of internal technological capabilities
leading to a loss of political decision making. Technological dependence also leads to lack of
basis for self-reliance development and deterioration in terms of trade. Not only that but also
the increase of poverty in most Developing Countries. If Developing Countries will develop
technological policies and development will enable them to identify priorities and objectives of
technological development and how this goal can be achieved.

Technology Policy and Management in Africa

Lack of clear policies and strategies to guide and manage the process of technological
development is the major obstacle to technological advancement. Even those countries that
have introduced such policies and strategies lack the cause for satisfaction in both on attempt
to define the content of technology, policy and effort to manage such policy once its content
has been defined. Kopoka (2003) defines technology policy as a set of principles, supported by
appropriate reward and penalties with a state to regulate public activities towards achieving
the goal it has chosen in regard to technology. Technology policy aims at solving technological
problems, which hinder the process of development and ensure attention and resources are
devoted to promoting the important positive contributions that technological factors can make.
Technology Development in Tanzania

Like other former African colonies, Tanzania inherited economy characterized by the export
goods sector. Before colonialism there existed industries such as cloth, blacksmith, pottery, and
other productions. During colonialism, Tanzania never experienced investment in technologies
that would establish an industrial base and would involve the majority of the population. For
long time Tanzanian economy has functioned as an appendage of the international capitalist
system. Even the technological advancement in Tanzania has been shaped and championed by
the dictates of international capitalism and developed on their interests, not in Tanzanian
interest.
Tanzania since independence adopted strategy of import substitution industrialization that

depended on import technology and expertise. The adaptation of this strategy is one of the
reasons for the slow move towards the establishment of indigenous technology capability. It
has led to the growing dependence on a largely imported, capital-intensive technology and has
thus not created extensive employment opportunities or indigenous technology development.
The process has been dependent on foreign capital and has emphasized the establishment of
consumer goods industries at the expense of investment and capital goods industries.
Science and Technology Policy Structure in Tanzania

Serious attempts to formulate science and technology in Tanzania go back to 1960s. These
attempts were prompted by various national and international events. At the international
level a major conference organized in 1964 in Lagos, Nigeria by UNESCO set in motion an
agenda to formulate a national science and technology policy for individual African countries.
Tanzania National Science Research (UTAFITI) was officially established in 1968 and came into
force in 1972. The council was given the overall responsibility of formulating and implementing
a national science and technology policy for Tanzania as well as overall responsibility for the
development of science and technology in the country. The Commission for science and
technology, which was established in 1986, replaced UTAFIOTI. The main purpose of the
commission was to establish a public organization in the form of parastatal organization that
would effectively and efficiently coordinate and promote scientific research and technological
development in the country. The commission was to act as the chief advisor of the government
on science and technology and their application to socio-economic development in the country.

The National Science and Technology Policy for Tanzania

The government on 6th June 1985 officially issued a comprehensive science and technology
policy statement. The National Science and Technology Policy for Tanzania represents an
official diagnosis of the science and technology problem in Tanzania and it provides a view of
development in science and technology over the next few years.
Contents of the National Science and Technology Policy for Tanzania

The Science and Technology policy in Tanzania has the following:
a) It gives the objectives for specific sectors
b) It stresses the need to train high quality scientists and technologists
c) It stresses on the ability to monitor the importation of foreign technologies and the
popularization of science and technology in the society
d) It stressed the importance of allocating adequate funds for scientific research and
proposed target to be used for science and technology activities
e) It also stressed the need to develop indigenous technologies and strengthen research
and development (R & D) institutions and advocate a stronger linkage system between
users and developers of the technologies. The agriculture sector was also given
prominence in the policy document and in addition it identified specific areas for
research and development. The major objective of the policy is to ensure effective use
of science and technology throughout the economy.
Observations on the Science and Technology Policy for Tanzania

The document makes reference to the encouragement of local expertise but only few areas of
expertise have been categorically specified as needing attention. These include design, building,
construction and production of raw materials. Although the idea of protecting local firms is
plausible, it is not clear why it is only these activities that have been singled out as deserving
preferential treatment. Unless this is a general statement about the principle of protecting local
firm, then a lot of other technology-related activities, such as mechanical engineering and
production management have also to be considered for protection.
There is as well general lack of critical understanding and awareness of the dynamics of
international environment and its influence on the development of science and technology in
Tanzania. To add up there are no safeguards made by the policy document to respond to a
rapidly changing international environment. These changing environments includes the role
played free market which requires non-governmental intervention in the development of
science and technology and the government is moving out of direct management of industry
and business.
As regard to institutional set-up, the policy has remained only general. Nowhere in the science
and technology policy for Tanzania there is acknowledgement of the existing science and
technology institutions since rapid changes in a characteristic feature of the present age, a

science and technology policy can prove purposeful only if it is dynamic and flexible enough to
respond to the requirements of changing conditions.
Tanzania apart from buying technology needs to do reverse engineering and technological
espionage. Scientists and engineers should be given facilities and funds to study technology
products and see how they can be made better.
INDUSTRIALIZATION IN AFRICA
Read the following article at Science, Technology & Industrialization in general.pdf
INDUSTRIALIZATION IN TANZANIA
Tanzania just after independence started to build local industries. Unlike some countries,
Tanzania had problem in both foreign exchange as well as diversification. It thus started with
Import Diversification Industries. It is under this strategy that industries such as Sunguratex,
Mwatex, Urafiki, etc were started. However, one problem was clearly seen, that we were able
to replace the clothes imported from outside but were unable to replace the machines after
they got worn. Some countries succeeded under this strategy, these were countries like Taiwan,
North Korea, Singapore etc. These countries got money and injected in the machinery while
Tanzania was engaging more in machinery cannibalism (one machine eating others in form of
spare parts, in order to repair one you had to replace a part or parts from another resulting to
the death of all).
This strategy was then changed around 1974 to Export Production Strategy (EPS). Under Export
Promotion many authorities were started, like cotton authority, sisal authority, cashew nut
authority, etc. In 1967 Tanzania came up with the Arusha Declaration amid these programmes
that needed money to implement. This forced Tanzania to make massive borrowing; in addition
it was affected by drought. In summary, from 1961-1964 and 1964-1969 Tanzania embarked
itself in Import Substitute Industrialization Strategy (ISIS), 1969-1974 in Export Promotion
Strategy and 1976-1995 in Long Term Industrialization Plan or Basic Industrialization.
Basic Industrialization Concept:

The members of University of Dar es Salaam participated in formulating this plan. The plan
aimed at starting industries that would manufacture products to meet the basic needs of the
people.
Types of industries:
1. Capital goods industries such as iron and steel, machines industries such as machine tools, non
ferrous metal industries like cement.
2. Intermediate industries: wood and paper product industries, printing, publishing and ally
industries.

3. Consumer goods industries: Textile industries and Food processing industries, tobacco
processing industries and beverage bottling industries.
Features of Basic Plan:

The basic feature of this plan was the inter-sectoral linkage. Capital goods industries had both
forward and backward linkage e.g. Mang’ula iron industry had backward linkage and forward
linkage with ALAF, UFI, bicycle plant (NABICO) and other farm manufacturing plants.
Minjingu TFC Agricultural Sector
Arusha Tanga Fertilizer Co.
This called for:
1. Transport to be constructed
2. Energy
3. Water
 1981-1982 Tanzania took over National Economic Survival Program (NESP)
 1982-1985 it adopted SAPs
 1986-1989 it started with the Economic Recovery Program I (ERP)
 1989-1992 it continued with Economic Recovery Program II (ERP)
 1992-1993 it formed the Parastatal Sector Reform Commission (PSRC).
Sustainable Industrial Development Policy -SIDP (1996-2020)

Sustainable Industrial Development Policy is known as SIDP is divided into three phases. The
policy has the following objectives:
1. To set out a path for sustainable development
2. It embraces the principles of market economy.
3. It assures that industries will prosper in the hands of private sector.
4. Government will be involved in creation of enabling environment
Highlights:
 Transformation from public sector-led industrial development to private sector-led
industrial development
 Production of capital and intermediate goods to compliment the current production of

consumer goods. Production is towards industrial competition. However, the transport level,
water supply, electricity has to be looked at by the government. In short, all utilities should be
supplied by the government

Three phase of implementation
Phase I: 1996-2000
The purpose is three fold:-
1. Ownership restructuring: Restructure ownership of industries through privatization of
government enterprises
2. Restructuring of the enterprises internally to become profitable than they used to be
3. To reorient government support from direct involvement and control to more indirect activities
i.e. creation of enabling environments
In 1876 there was a quarrel between Western Europe and USA on machine tools industries. The
Western European countries refused America to bring its machines so as to protect their infant
industries until when they are ready for competition (see also Prof. Viner’s argument on Trade
Creation and Trade Diversion).
Phase II 2001-2010: New Capacities

This phase is characterized by shift from the current comparative advantage to
competitiveness. Emphasis is on projects with potential to become competitive. More attention
is to be paid to export promotion.
Phase III: 2011-2020

This phase sets consolidation and sustainability of industrial structures. It focuses on
intermediate and capital goods i.e. iron, steel and coal.
Import Substitution (Prebisch-Singer Thesis)

Prebisch and Singer developed the Import Substitution Industrialization (ISI) strategy. African
countries that experimented with the ISI strategy, which was very predominant in the 1960s,
were convinced that because of secular decline in the value of their export of agricultural
products to their imports of manufactured products, their terms of trade were declining. (That
is, export prices declined relative to import prices.) Nkrumah clearly understood that the
industrialization strategy as advocated by Arthur Lewis would not reduce Ghana’s dependence
on foreign capital and would not improve its terms of trade.
Nkrumah opted for the ISI Strategy. Other African countries followed Ghana’s lead in the
1960’s. Mali and Kenya looked at industrialization in terms of cost savings from local production
in place of high cost imports from abroad. Similarly, other African countries seriously
questioned why they should have to import manufactures based on the raw materials they
exported. Thus, it became very essential for the African countries (for example, Ethiopia,
Nigeria, Kenya, Mali, and Zambia) to pursue the ISI strategies in the 1960s. They strongly argued
against primary-product export expansion and instead they moved into producing
manufactured products at home. As discussed by Todaro, advocates of import substitution
(Inward-looking development policy) believe that less developed countries (LDCs) should initially

substitute domestic production of previously imported simple consumer goods (first-stage IS)
and then substitute through domestic production for a wider range of more sophisticated
manufactured items (second-stage IS)—all behind the protection of high tariffs and quotas on
these imports. In the long run, IS advocates cite the benefits of greater domestic industrial
diversification and the ultimate ability to export previously protected manufactured goods as
economies of scale, low labour costs, and the positive externalities of learning by doing cause
domestic prices to become more competitive with world prices.
ISI strategy had limitations

Import-substitution industrialization (ISI) strategy raised the learning curve of the African
countries that went through it. Nonetheless, it had the following limitations:
1. Being secure behind protective tariff walls, its products were non-competitive and very
expensive.
2. Import substitution’s main beneficiaries were the owners of foreign direct investments.
3. The imported capital-good inputs and intermediate products that come under
government subsidies contributed not only to heavy debt burden but also balance of
payments deficits.
4. ISI policy negatively affected the exportation of traditional primary products because
the exchange rates of some of the African countries were artificially overvalued in order
to raise the prices of exports and lower the prices of imports.
Thus, Import substitution, which was created in order to stimulate infant industry growth and
self-sustained industrialization by creating forward and backward linkages with the rest of the
economy, has inhibited the industrialization process.
According to United Nations and World Bank estimates, “More than four-fifths of the sub-
Saharan African countries still fell in the low-income category of developing countries (with
annual per capita incomes of less than US$360 in 1978), and their average rate of growth per
capita of 0.9% over the two decades was the lowest of all the regions of the Third World.” It
seems therefore that the development policies that were designed by the academicians did
little to generate socially acceptable high rates of economic growth in Africa. Although
politically independent, “control of the import-export trade and the financial sector and
ownership of major production capacity in the export and industrial sectors remained in foreign
hands (industries were owned and managed by Europeans or third-country nationals). In short,
African countries were economically dependent on the West for their:
1. Technology and capital goods industries,
2. Managerial skills,
3. Finance, and
4. Marketing skills.
Under these economic conditions it seems that to develop a self-reliant development strategy
for Africa would be impossible.
The discussions we have carried on so far seem to indicate that the academicians in the
Universities failed provide viable strategies for Africa’s economic development in the 1950s and
1960s. It seems that after the 1970s, the United Nations and the Bretton Woods institutions
have assumed the mantle to develop models and economic policies for Africa’s development.
Through the efforts of Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, the African countries tried to form a political
Pan African union, to take matters into their own hands, and engage in a self reliant strategy of
development. To this end, Pan African conferences were held, political groupings were
formed—Monrovia and Casablanca- and Organization of African Unity (OAU) were formed. Not
much was achieved because colonial rule left the African economies in a weak and fragile
situation. Given these conditions it would be difficult to build economically viable nation states.
These fragile states began to crumble under balance of payment crises generated by rising
energy prices of the early 1970s and under weak commodity prices resulting from the recession
in 1980/81 in the industrialized countries. The World Bank and IMF developed strategies
including the Structural Adjustment Programs (SAP) to improve upon economic conditions in
Africa but ended up making the conditions worse.
Review:
In this module we have looked at the concept of science and technology and how the two can
affect industrialization and development at the end of it all. We have seen the ways that Africa,
especially Tanzania tried to industrialise and where it went wrong and the way it had taken to
rectify that mistake. In globalization, industrialization in Africa is threatened by the cheap
products from the industrialised countries that come under the liberalised system.
Identify major problems hindering effective transfer of technology in the Developing World
countries such as Tanzania. Provide suggestions on how these problems can be addressed.
Resources:
Komba, A.A. (2004) To Protect or not to Protect: The Predicament of Tanzania’s Manufacturing
Industries and Implications for Public Policy in Tanzania Journal of development studies, Vol.5 (1) March
2004, pp. 17-29.
Tanzania’s Policy on Sustainable Industrialization and Competitiveness at Tanzania Sustainable

Industrial Development and Competitiveness.pdf
TOPIC 3: GLOBALISATION AND DEVELOPMENT

An Overview:
We are living in a globalized world. We speak about globalization in our every day talk, but what
exactly is globalization? Do we all agree on what globalization is? Is what we call globalization
real global? These are some of the question we will attempt to answer in this topic.
Introduction:
It is argued that trade and communication are enhanced in globalization. Today the world is
one especially in economics as well as in transport; as one can reach all corners of the world.
However, the rift between the North and the South has become bigger. The concept of third

world is no longer. Asia and Africa are at different levels of development. We cannot stop
asking is there a way out or should we manoeuvre our way within the mud of globalization? Is it
better now than it was before globalization? From whatever point of view you look at these
disturbing questions, one fact remains, that is the new globalization in which the development
of Information, Communication and Technology (ICT) looms large has increased the polarization
in the world. The present globalization is an era characterized by internationalization and Trans-
nationalization of capital. Is the globe homogenous then? Not at all. Trade, development is not
equal in globalization. Who determines what should be in this global village? Who are the
movers and shakers of globalization?
Today one feels that the world has become smaller, international travel has become faster,
easier and cheaper; music, art, cuisines, and cinema have all become cosmopolitan in the
world’s major centres and beyond. Communication under globalization is almost instantaneous
(IMF Staff, 2002), and more words can be transmitted, which makes the reduced mobility of
labour of less consequence. The high-technology jobs can be brought to the workers instead of
the workers to the jobs; people can become part of another countries design team without
having to leave their homelands. Ohmae (1990) argues in his book The Borderless World that
under globalization people, firms, markets matter more than states. Waltz (1999) claims that
economic interests have become so strong that markets have begun to replace politics both at
home and abroad. It is also said that free markets, transparency, and flexibility are watchwords.
The term ‘globalization’ has acquired considerable emotive force. Some view it as a process
that is beneficial, a key to future world economic development and also inevitable and
irreversible. Others regard it with hostility, even fear, believing that it increases inequality
within and between nations, threatens employment and living standards and thwarts social
progress (Koma, 2005). Here we will briefly offer an overview of some aspects of globalization
and aims to identify ways in which African countries can tap the gains of this process through
international trade while looking at its potential and its risks. For it is important to recognize
that true globalization is not a zero-sum game, thus it is not necessary for some countries to
lose in order that others may gain. But to take advantage of this trend, countries have to
position themselves properly through the right policies.
Module Materials:
The Concept
Just like there is no agreement on what development is, there is a big debate on what is
globalization. Rugumamu (2005) defines it as a widening, deepening, and spreading of
worldwide interconnections of all aspects of contemporary social life, from cultural to criminal,
from financial, trade, technology to the spiritual. Globalization is argued to be a sense that the
fate of all parts of the globe is somehow bound together more intensely than before through
ties of interdependence and the interpenetration of economic, political, and cultural
relationships across existing borders and boundaries. The global economy, characterized by
massive transnational flows of capital and labour, and dominated by multinational companies,
looms large in globalization. The global patterns of communication, in which new electronic
technology, including satellites and the internet, transmit messages and co-ordinate cashless
financial transactions instantaneously across borders, obliterating any limit to communication

set by distance or political boundaries (Ouattara, 2005). Geography has, in this, been
pronounced dead. The world has become a global village; consumers in virtually every country
and region purchase as a result global products and services produced by global companies
(Holton, 1998).
One thing is obvious, globalization is not neutral and it is not only about economics but it is also
ideological, political, cultural, etc. It is about the dominant culture and ideology, which is
capitalism. In globalization there are set of rules, not necessarily acceptable by all. These rules
favour some and oppress others. Who are the actors setting the rules? If we look at the process
of globalization separately, we will see the highly industrialised countries, the big trans-national
companies, international financial companies, etc as the movers and shakers who set the rules.
However, looking at it holistically we realize that we are naive, for even the poor countries are
not passive in globalization. In reality they too have a role to play though there are big shots
who keep globalization afloat. They are these big actors who put regulations and
irregulations/deregulations to let their products find way into the poor countries market while
hindering our products to enter the Northern countries markets. Globalization is an attempt to
make the developing world countries to remain primary producers of raw materials, thus
peasants to remain peasants.
In addition, in globalization there is the problem of debts-aids-loans, etc. We are in the global
system, that is true, but at a subordinate level. There exist a kind of international indirect rule
system; the leaders of developing world countries are made to see that what the developed
world countries want is accepted and implemented. This is not only true with the government
leaders but also with the intellectuals, the researchers, the consultants, etc., who advise the
governments and the leaders of the developing world countries. The predatory leaders are
made to believe by the actors abroad that if anything goes wrong they will be given help to
crack the uprising. In globalization the powers of the government are made to shrink and
private companies’ to mushroom.
When did globalization start? Most of us would want to think that it started in the 1980s
especially after the fall of Soviet Union. This is not true, this is the time it started to become
vibrant (Samir Amin, http://www.qantara.de/webcom/show_article.php/_c-327/_nr-1/_p-
1/i.html?PHPSESSID=5). It is when capitalism became the dominant culture i.e. the problem of
videos, movies, etc., and all the criminality related incidents, the sex, nude pictures, the dress
code away from African culture, etc., all spring from the dominant culture. Globalization started
long time ago and Africa came into contact the first time it made contact with the North during
Mercantilism when the first looting of Africa took place. Then there came the stage of industrial
capitalism when Africa was made to be colonies to produce raw materials for the North. Then
with the formation of UN and the WB and IMF capital started to be internationalized. When
capital became transnational and started to be used to subordinate states, it marked the
coming of new globalization. Despite all these changes capitalism retained its roots in the origin
of state and now it has sole sovereignty after the fall of the Soviet Union. Capitalism has
acquired new face but it is still the same, “ us ca c ang usta c s (the more it

changes, the more it remains the same). The core characteristics of capitalism remain the same
even in globalization; there are still inequalities and exploitation of the weaker nations which
remain poor and with no power. In getting profit, the rule has always been the poor suffer
when they must.
The Third World-ism

Recently, the developing countries are no longer at the same level of development. There are
now 3 sets:-
1. The East Asian Countries: South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan and Hong Kong. Recently we have
China, Malaysia and India following remotely. This group of countries seem to have made it.
They are now booming in economics. We are asking ourselves, how did they get there?
a) Asian countries have a unified culture, and national culture brings love for national
development.
b) Regional integration was possible due the uniform culture.
c) They did put priority on human capital i.e. education. East Asian countries’ economies are
not as fragile as African countries economies.
d) They developed because states had a big say in the economies. A strong state is important
at the take-off stage.
2. Latin America and remotely we can sneak in South Africa.
3. Africa pulling at the tail with fragile economy producing primary goods.
- Economies are fragmented
- Regional integration is difficult
- States are unstable
Globalization affects these 3 sets differently. In Africa globalization is deskilling the people, e.g.
with second hand products such as clothes (mitumba) and other imported products, our
industries and skills of the people are dying. The corruption done by international
conglomerates and national companies makes it even harder to take-off. We are not saying
that globalization is holly bad. Technology and communication such as video conferencing, the
advancement in health (the complicated operations that can be done) are all features of
globalization and are good. However, what we are saying is that the negative impacts outweigh
the positive impacts. Africa needs to find ways to respond to globalization and not ways to cope
with it. Globalization will be here with us for a while (before it changes to another phase, may
be), therefore it is important to find ways to survive and live. We cannot follow the ways that
made the North develop. They developed by accumulating capital by exploiting Africa, Asia and
Latin America, who are we to exploit? Yet we cannot copy to the letter the example of East
Asian countries because they developed at a different epoch i.e. when donors were still

friendly. We cannot deny that capitalism is dominant but it does not mean that it is viable for
Africa today. We cannot wait for the North to help us; the North has never been out to help
Africa. Even during the time of Cold War, the two blocks of the North (known as West and East
by then) were in Africa to enlist supporters against the other and not to help Africa. In whatever
development alternative that Africa seeks, we cannot leave the North out of the picture by
having only South-South regional cooperation and integrations. The North would go on claiming
that there is no other alternative development away from the mainstream capitalism. However,
Africa needs alternative development strategy away from the Northern capitalism. Africa is
marginalised in capitalism but as Amir says maybe Africa’s marginalization is necessary for the
continent to come up with a viable development agenda.
Challenges of Globalization
Though globalization is said to be fad of the 90s, some analysts have argued that the world
economy was just as globalized 100 years ago as it is today (IMF Staff, 2002) and Africa made its
first contact with it when it entered into trade with the capitalist North i.e. in the Trans-Atlantic
Triangular trade. Globalization is thus nothing but capitalism in a new face. Even under
globalization, capitalism has not changed; it still accumulates wealth on the hands of the few on
expense of the majority in the society. Still it is production for profits, alienation and
exploitation of labour, there is a tendency of exploitation and domination of weak regions,
economies and societies. Globalization is basically about universally institutionalizing inequity
and has not been left entirely on the markets but it is more politics, economic and security
choices and interests of great powers and firms under the leadership of United States (Koma,
2005). Africa is fully integrated in the world economy but asymmetrically integrated since it first
made contact with the North. It has always been a victim of exploitation, domination and
humiliation by great powers. The deeper Africa integrates into the global economy the more it
is structurally weakened and marginalized; the more it liberalizes its economies and polities,
the more it is excluded. Though we argue about globalization, the world economy is not global
yet and markets, even for strategic industries and major firms are still far from being fully
integrated. The unmitigated forces of globalization and democratization have undermined
Africa’s institutional and organizational capacity to redefine emancipatory alternative
development strategies.
After the triumph of capitalism over communism, it is claimed that there is no other alternative
apart from capitalism and liberal democracy (Fukuyama, 1992). Global economy is emerging,
therefore national economies; thus domestic strategies of national economies and societal
management are audibly becoming immaterial. Globalization makes a claim that it will provide
the foundations for a dynamic world economic system characterised by free trade, unrestricted
capital mobility, and open markets and harmonised institutions. It promises prosperity for
countries that join the system and economic deprivation for those who do not (Waltz, 1999).
These have happened in the North but there is silence on the impact of unregulated capitalism
on economies of Africa and the South in general. Though globalization is argued to bring
interdependence, which in turn would reduce the wars and bring about the much sought peace
and democracy, and interdependence would lead to the so-called “borderless world” many of
these are yet to happen including interdependence itself. What have already been achieved are
the dependence and the widening disparities between the North and the South leading to yet
marginalization of the latter. The process now conceived and practiced, denies poorer countries
access to the processes and lessons of historical development. It erases perspective of history.
We do not claim a turn at imperialist rule, but not one of the more advanced countries arrived
at their present levels of development without state ownership and state intervention, without
unilateral tariff regulation and protectionism, without unfettered powers of taxation and state
spending, at some time in their history (Koma, 2006).
What we call globalization is not really global but limited to the Northern latitude. It is not even
really liberal except to the powerful actors in the market, the rest of us have to follow the
readymade policies closed in an envelope marked “Structural Adjustment Programs” (SAPs). As
by 1991, 81% of the world stock of foreign direct investment was in the high-wage countries of
the North, this reality has not changed (Oxfam, 2002). Sadly after many years of globalization
and liberalization the world is not one. The gap between the North and the South is widening as
the days go by. Liberalization is a straitjacket that allows the states’ policies little room to
wiggle (that is if those policies are there in the first place). The structural Adjustment Programs
(SAPs) engineered by the North backed by the multilateral financial institutions have destroyed
African economies and the world powers have succeeded in buying the predatory African
leaders for their own benefit thus taking the external imposed policies together with externally
influenced home-grown, to make into top-down elitist visions. At the moment in Africa,
persistent poverty and increasing inequalities are standing features of globalization.
In the era of globalization Africa has 75% of its exports depending on the Northern markets thus
making it dangerously vulnerable to changing conditions in global markets (Rugumamu, 2005).
Africa’s economies are so much integrated vertically with the North while internally
disintegrated, with static economies that depend on agricultural products, often having
unstable prices and always with substitutes. However, Waltz (1999) argues that what Africa is
facing is normal because in a competitive system there are always winners and losers, a few do
exceptionally well, some get along, and many bring up the rear. Globalizers do not claim that
globalization is complete, but only that it is in process and that the process is irreversible thus
Africa along with many other Low Developed Countries (LDCs) have no alternative as history
comes to an end (Fukuyama, 1992).
While it is pushing Africa to open its market, the North has maintained a high protection in
agriculture through an array of very high tariffs, including tariff peaks (tariffs above 15 percent),
tariff escalation (tariffs that increase with the level of processing), and restrictive tariff quotas
(limits on the amount that can be imported at a lower tariff rate). Average tariff protection in
agriculture is about nine times higher than in manufacturing. In addition, agricultural subsidies
in industrial countries, which are equivalent to two-third of Africa’s total GDP, undermine
Africa’s agricultural sectors and exports by depressing world prices and pre-emptying markets.
For example, the European Commission is spending 2.7 billion euro per year making sugar
profitable for European farmers at the same time, it is shutting out low-cost imports of tropical
sugar (IMF Staff, 2001). Paul Krugman (1997) points out that the United States is still almost 90
percent an economy that produces goods and services for its own use. She has introduced

quota system and has subsidized products that compete with producers in the developing
world, which lower the world market price and thereby reduce income of producers in the
developing world. In the old political era, the strong vanquished the weak, in the new economic
era of globalization; it is the law of the jungle ‘the fast eat the slow’ (Klaus Schwab quoted in
Friedman 1999, 171).
Despite all the threats, globalization could be a ground for Africa to profit in international trade
if it stands united to bargain as one region at the level of international sphere. However, this
does not mean that countries should seek to isolate themselves from globalization; rather
governments must fully embrace globalization in awareness of its potential risks, and provide
adequate protection for the vulnerable segments of society during the process of change
(Ouattara, 1997). Globalization as a result generates forces that are major threats and
opportunities at the same time.
Bretton Woods Organizations: Trade, Liberalization, Investment

deregulations and Privatization
Well-managed trade has a power to lift millions of people out of poverty but increased trade is
not an automatic guarantee of poverty reduction. Experience of the developed countries
expose benefits of trade on one side and disappointing outcomes associated with growing
integration through trade on the other. Globaphiles argue that trade is already making
globalization work for the poor and it will continue to do so in future. Globapholes turn this
world-view upside down arguing that trade is inherently bad for the poor, trade leads to more
poverty and inequality therefore the less the trade the better (Oxfam, 2002). Waltz (1999)
argues that the resisters of globalization are bitter because consciously or not they know they
are doomed. Since the end of the Cold War and the collapse of communism America stands as
the ultimate benign hegemony deciding which country to reward and which to punish, and
nothing can be done about its decision. Therefore, under the protection of American military
power, globalization will proceed relentlessly. The anti-globalization deserves credit for bringing
the injustices and failures of globalization to a political arena but these are the battles of words
that offer no hope for the future.
In the world today, trade accounts for a greater share of world income than ever before, thus
changes in the trade pattern will have an increasing influence on patterns of income
distribution and so on poverty reduction. Developing countries have registered a rapid increase
in their ratio of exports to GNP, that account for more than one third of their combined GNP, a
proportion that is higher than for rich countries. While China, India and Mexico have a boom in
high-technology exports; they have come up as the major suppliers of cutting-edge
technologies and labour intensive goods, the exports of South Asia and sub-Sahara Africa
account for less than 2 percent (Oxfam, 2002). The changing role of developing countries in
international division of labour reflects powerful technological forces that are driving
globalization; digitalisation is revolutionising international relations. Transnational Companies
(TNCs) are powerful in the global trade linking producers in poor countries with consumers in
the rich countries (Rugumamu, 2005). Trade can be a boost for poverty reduction in Africa but

tides generated by trade in Globalization lift some boats higher than the others, and some are
sinking faster.
Most often, the export of Africa’s production is dominated by simple assembly and re-export of
the imported components under TNCs patronage, with limited transfer of technology. Sub-
Saharan Africa has a problem associated with low prices; deteriorating terms of trade since late
70s have cost the region 50 cents for every US dollar of aid received. In fact even the export
growth we are talking about is built on high exploitative employment practices associated with
low wage and long working hours. Worse is the reality that most of the governments have
imposed what they call flexible labour practices in order to attract the investors but doing harm
to the economies all the more (Oxfam, 2002). The removal of trade barriers in rich countries
would be beneficial to the poor countries but rapid import liberalization in developing countries
has often increased poverty and inequalities. The loan conditions attached to IMF and World
Bank programs add more to the problem. IMF, World Bank and major Northern governments
are strong advocates of trade liberalization; IMF and World Bank have been since giving loans
attached to reduction of trade barriers. As a result poor countries in Africa have been opening
up their economies more rapidly than the rich countries. Average import tariffs have been cut
by half in most of the countries in sub-Saharan Africa, and Tanzania in particular has opened its
mouth too wide that even flies are coming in. Although the World Bank argues that the poor
countries share in the benefits of growth on an equitable basis, experience shows that this is
not the case (Weisbrot and Baker, 2002). The inequalities do not only exist between the rich
countries and poor countries but also among the poor countries’ people themselves; the gap
between the poor and the rich in Tanzania is wider now that it was before. Rugumamu (2005)
proposes that Africa should not seek further integration in the world economy but rather make
a return to reconstitute the embryonic, post colonial states and change the balance of social
forces internally that benefit the popular masses and consolidates their position as the best
mobile of social change and transformation.
There is a need of new modes of politics and new modes of economic organization that
transcend liberal democracy and economics. At the same time governance at all levels need to
be reconstructed by democratic strategies that help to redistribute power and resources,
empower the unrepresented sections of the society and reduce systemic inequalities. Africa
needs to cooperate and use globalization as an opportunity to gain a collective bargaining
power over the North. Africa’s opportunity to minimize the costs of predatory globalization is
both at local level and transnational politics, and transnational actors. At local level there is a
great need to have a strong state to guarantee the smooth running of internal politics and good
economic configurations. Then, since the world economy relies in bargaining and interacting
with all types of actors e.g. private business groups, NGOs, financial institutions and states,
African states need to develop and foster strong institutional capacities, promote peace and
security, try to promote technological development diffusion and keep pace with it, create and
maintain efficient and cut-throat production structures, improve productivity and react flexibly
and imaginatively to altering tastes and trends in global demand.

The system of flexible accumulation and subcontracting probably will benefit the few relatively
dynamic political economies, like Botswana, South Africa, Mauritius, Senegal, Tunisia and may
be Egypt, while leaving the rest of Africa with no comparative advantage but exploitation of
women and minority populations (who are usually the last to be hired and the first to be fired)
that will be employed in these sectors. With HIV/AIDS in the arena adding to the already
present problem of malaria and tuberculosis, Africa is further plunged in the deeper mud that is
even harder to get out from. Likewise, the world economy’s gatekeepers will keep on
promising, bribing and manipulating the African leaders and their advisors in order to remain
on course and resist any substantial change. The multilateral institutions (IMF, WB, WTO and
leading states of the North) will come up with empty promises of how Africa can benefit from
the opportunities offered by globalization; talks on how to eliminate the remaining barriers on
trade, etc. However, all these are challenges for Africa to provide a visionary leadership and
creative energies to struggle and survive and respond to all these crises. Ake (quoted by
Rugumamu, 2005) argues that perhaps marginalization will help Africa develop an agenda of
development that it does not possess up to the present.
Rugumamu (2005) makes a claim that national reliance; regional cooperation and integration
remain necessary for Africa and not only a choice. Efficient regional cooperation allows the
economies of Africa to overcome the disadvantage of their relatively small size and, by opening
access to larger markets, to realize economies of scale Enhancing the trade among themselves
naturally also strengthens their ability to participate in trade on a global scale, and could lead
toward further progress in the direction of non-discriminatory multilateral trade liberalization.
The challenge for the future will be to ensure that these regional organizations are perceived as
effective vehicle for the integration of African countries into the world economy, providing
mutual support to their members in their efforts (Ouattara, 1997). It is high time Africa revisits
ideas of Friedrich List, Alexander Hamilton, Alexander Gershenkron and Samir Amir on national
self-reliance and structural transformation in the backward societies. These writers argued that,
Africa needs to selectively delink itself from the North so that it can have sustainable
development. Africa needs to a period of self-centred development i.e. protection motivated
development policy (Rugumamu, 2005). Africa can learn from East Asia of how selective
delinking can benefit it from the opportunities offered by global markets, international savings
and technology transfers.
Besides, Africa needs to develop a people-centred approach that is need-oriented, self-reliant,

and indigenous and economically sound. There is a need to balance demand and supply
without suppressing demand. The immediate cost of self-reliance and greater economic
independence and transformation will not be necessarily slower but less current consumption.
Thus there bound to be higher taxes, high prices for relatively inferior domestic goods and
services, and the luxurious consumption for the few will be deliberately cut short. The engine of
development and growth would be deeply hinged within national, regional and South-South
axes (Rugumamu, 2005) because as a group, developing countries have become much more
important in world trade, they now account for one-third of world trade (IMF Staff, 2002). It is
only through this way that Africa can save its infant industries from the unfair competition
against superior products from the North. Africa then has to look inside itself for internal

strength and carefully evaluates opportunities offered by international political economy, if it

has to participate in global economy on its own terms rather than just being pulled at the
bottom. Africa has to form a strong coalition to bargain collectively, if it wants the North to take
it seriously. It is said that after capitalism has triumphed over communism there is no
alternative system; I tend to disagree with this. Socialism can be an alternative system, one
would say, but it failed before. This might be true, but by the fact that it failed it does not follow
that it will fail again, could be it failed because it was badly implemented or it failed not
because it is a bad system in itself but it was sabotaged. Lastly democracy and justice is
important for Africa to achieve lasting peace and security that are prerequisites for
development.
Review:
In this module we have looked at the assumptions, policy prescriptions, explanatory power and
limitations of the Globalization theoretical framework and its effects on African countries. We
have seen how trade can lift millions of African people out of poverty and how that is hindered
by the double standards and rigged rules of globalization. Lastly we discussed the development
alternatives for Africa amid predatory globalization.
The unmitigated powers of globalization have proved fatal to African economies. Discuss how
such situation could be reversed to be used for African countries development.
Resources:
Amin, S. (2003) Globalization Is All about the Profit of Capital at Globalization Is All about the Profit
of Capital.pdf
Khor, Martin (2000), Director of the Third World Network, at the Opening Session of the
Millennium Forum, UN General Assembly Hall, New York at Globalization and Technology of the
3rd World.pdf
Mpangala, G.P. (2000) Ethnic Conflicts in the Region of the Great Lakes. Origins and Prospects for
Change. Dar es Salaam: Institute of Kiswahili Research.
Nnoli, O. (1989) Ethnic Politics in Africa. Ibadan: AAPS Books Series No.1, Vintage Publishers.
Othman, H. (ed.), (2000) Reflections on Leadership in Africa. Brussels: VUB University Press.
Yusuf, Shahid (2001) Globalization and the Challenge for Developing Countries. World Bank:
DECRG at Challenges of Globalization.pdf
Others:
Friedman, Thomas L. (1999) The Lexus and the Olive Tree. New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux.
Fukuyama, Francis (1992) The End of History and the Last Man. New York: Penguin publications.

Krugman, Paul (1997) “C titiv n ss: A Dang r us Obs ssi n In T N wS a f P itics. New
York: W.W. Norton and Foreign Affairs.
Ohmae, Kenichi (1990) The Borderless World: Power and Strategy in the Interlinked Economy. New York:
Harper Business.
Oxfam (2002) Rigged Rules and Double Standards: trade, globalization, and the fight against poverty.
Make Trade Fair.
Rugumamu, Severine (2005) G ba izati n D ystifi d: Africa’s P ssib D v nt Futures. Dar es

salaam: Dar es salaam University Press.
Waltz, Kenneth N. (1999) Globalization and Governance. PS Online. Retrieved on 18th November 2006 at
www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/walglob.htm
Waltz, Kenneth N. (1979) Theory of International Politics. New York: McGraw-Hill
TOPIC 4: REGIONAL COOPERATION AND INTEGRATION

An Overview:
Regional cooperation and integration today is seen as a viable way for Africa and developing
world as a whole to develop. However, regional cooperation and integration poses challenges
to African countries that cannot even unify inside the single states. Despite all the challenges,
regional cooperation remains a strong way forward for Africa to bargain collectively as a bloc in
the era of predatory globalization.
Introduction:
We can start by asking ourselves, why should countries cooperate? Countries cooperate so as
to help each other in those difficulty times that each countries individually cannot. They also do
so to minimize conflict and maximize cooperation which is the reason for presence of different
embassies. Balassa argues that economic integration is important to ensure sufficient market,
to increase bargaining power and also is a process to imitate European countries. Countries
cooperate to coordinate and harmonize policies that cannot be done at national level but only
at the regional level. Such policies include those related to politics, immigration, regional
identity and the like.
There are issues that need regional cooperation, these include:

1. Environment: Issues such as depletion of the ozone layer that makes the earth hotter
and climate change for the worst (more rain, floods, rising of sea level, etc.) need
cooperation at the regional and global level.

2. Non-proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD): Such weapons include

chemical, biological and nuclear.
3. International Terrorism: Terrorism by non state actors such as Al-Qaeda, by state actors
such as that of Bush and his friend Blair. Terrorists have no political boundaries, at
times they end up hitting the wrong people, so there is a need to join hands to fight
them.
4. International drug cartels: International society has agreed that drugs are bad and need
to be prohibited.
5. Human Rights Regime: Human rights cut across the boundaries.
6. International security
7. Communicable diseases: such as HIV/AIDS, Ebola, Malaria, Birds Flu, TB, etc.
8. International migration: Issues such as how many people, what kind of people to move
to where and for how long, who should be allowed, etc.
Module Materials:
Regional Integration
In normal life we can choose either to cooperate or compete and enter into conflicts. To
cooperate is to coordinate and harmonize policies that cannot be done at the national level but
only at the regional level. These include issues of politics, immigration, regional identity, etc.
Economic integration is a process and state of affairs. Balassa1 argues that economic integration
is important to ensure sufficient market, to increase bargaining power and imitating European
countries that have succeeded. In African history there are people like Nkrumah who advocated
for total integration of Africa as a single state and Nyerere who wanted a step by step
integration of Africa. The issues here can be divided into federalism and functionalism.
Federalists want to build supranatural power above all other states while functionalists want an
international community which always tend to end national states (cf. Prof. Anyang’ Nyong’s
book on Regional Integration).
There are issues that need regional cooperation such as

1. Environmental issues that include depletion of the ozone layer which makes the earth
hotter and climate change for the worst (more rain, floods, rising of sea level, etc.).
2. Non-proliferation of weapon of Mass Destruction (WMD) such as chemicals, biological
and nuclear.
1
Balassa, B. (1961) The Theory of Economic Integration. Homewood, III: Richard and Unwim.
Also refer Ghai, D. (1973) Current Problems of Economic Integration. New York: United Nations.

3. International Terrorism especially by the non-state actors such as Al Qaeda and

sometimes even by state actors such as atrocities done by Bush and Blair. It is important
to coordinate against terrorists because terrorists have no political boundaries and at
times they end up hitting wrong people.
4. International drug cartels: International community has agreed that drugs are bad and
need to be prohibited.
5. Human Rights Regime: human rights cut across boundaries therefore they need
coordination across boundaries.
6. International Security
7. Communicable Diseases such as HIV/AIDS, EBOLA, Malaria, Birds Flu, etc.
8. International Migration: we need to coordinate to know how many people, what kind of
people move to where and for how long and why, we should know and work on who
should be allowed to move and who should not be allowed.
Prof. Viner’s Theory of International Trade

Prof. Viner argues in his Pure Theory of International Trade that cooperation in trade brings
specialization and higher production, higher output which leads to lower prices. He calls this the
virtuous circle of trade and economic growth. The circle says that economic specialization
results to division of labour which brings efficiency and higher productivity that gives rise to
economic growth which will bring better welfare.
Integration: Viner says that countries seek to harmonise and coordinate their affairs i.e.
political, economic, social policies in order to maximise welfare of citizens.
Trade Creation: If region X with countries A, B and C decide to join region Y with countries D, E,
and F to trade freely then they have trade creation.
Trade Diversion: However, if region X with countries A, B, and C and region Y with countries D,
E, and F decide to exclude country G or H, or G and H then they are having Trade Diversion. This
can be done by putting trade barriers such as tariffs, quotas, etc. Trade integration creates
bigger market while trade diversion compromises the consumers by letting them consume
lower quality products to protect infant industries in order to prepare them for competition
when they are ready.
In short prof. Viner’s argues on:
1. Doctrine of Comparative Cost: That if trade is left free each country will produce those
things/products that they enjoy comparative advantage and import what has no comparative
cost. That ratio should be compared not just cost, this includes ratio of production in the
country and with outside countries that produce the same commodity. Therefore, trade
creation should outweigh trade diversion.
2. Complimentarity VS Competition: When there is economic integration, countries enjoy great

complementarity and less rivalry.
3. Size of custom union is widened by economic integration.

How Viable is Viner’s theory for African environment?

Prof. Viner was looking at industrial developed countries in the North and not developing
countries. He looked at the flexible and diversified economies where agriculture and industries
are at the same level. He looked at free market economies where entrepreneurs have perfect
information on the market. Viner assumes expanding market; that is if one advertises
intelligently the market will expand.
African countries are not uniform in development. African economies are inflexible based on
agriculture; due to its historical background Africa has no finance therefore no big market.
Viner assumes that you have to reach a level in development (industrialization) which Africa has
not. The Market in Africa has imperfection ability with poor market signals, no free flow of
information and unreliable policies. Africa needs to get out of poverty and Viner’s ideas are to
develop the market. Africa in addition has more vertical trade than horizontal trade and
regional integration is precisely about the latter.
In Africa the market does not allow free market/free trade. African market is such that it opens
market for international entrepreneurs (e.g. In Kenya, we have the British, Canadians, etc.) and
the local entrepreneurs are forced out of trade. Africa has inflexible economies that are
undiversified, depending on unscientific agriculture the peasant type). African economies are
not internally integrated; that it cannot consume what it produces and trade with the surplus.
Integration is complementarity but most of the African countries produce similar goods, coffee,
tea, sisal, rubber, etc.
For Viner’s theory to work you need perfect information about the market (people switch what
they take; switch and choose due to change of income, advertisements, health considerations
e.g. diabetics and sugar intake). Perfect information should exist for entrepreneurs; that is
information is not hidden. One has to know what bank gives credit and at what rate, who
produces what and at what cost and why, how many people took a certain product last year
and why. In our countries such information is either incomplete, hidden or is not available all
together. This makes entrepreneur unable to make rational decisions. In Africa the market
contracts, no rational entrepreneur would invest in such a region.
It is important therefore that African leaders aim at production for consumption for integration
to work well. There is a need for visionary leadership in the take-off stage that can mobilize East
Africans to buy East African products and forget the European luxurious products (cf. Infantry
Industry Agreement).
Regional integration can provide Africa with power to bargain as a regional bloc when they go
to World Trade Organization (WTO) and argue, for example that in the next 10 years African
market will be closed for certain products so because it wants to protect infant industries and
will be reopened when they are ready for competition. Africa need to produce for home
market/consumption and use resources it has to produce what it needs. However, in real life
cooperation and integration are political processes with 6 stages, for economic integration is a
process and state of affairs.

1. Preferential Trade Areas (PTA): This is a stage where by progressively the tariffs are
reduced in number of commodities over time eg. Schedule A -50%, schedule B -25%
schedule C –free
Free Trade Areas (FTA): Elimination of tariffs and non tariffs barrier e.g. schedule A -1
year, schedule B -8 months, schedule C -4 months. Non tariffs barriers include quotas
restrictions, total restrictions and technical specification (rigorous) e.g. Lake Victoria’s
fish and the EU market.
2. Custom Union: Common external tariffs against non members.
3. Common Market: Free movement of goods and services and free movement of capital
and labour.
4. Economic and Monetary Union: Single currency e.g. euro (€) for European Union.
Comprehensive and compensatory policies; Poor countries and the sectors that are
doing badly
5. Same passport
6. Political Union
It is worthwhile to note that African economies are internally disintegrated and undiversified,
basically built upon agricultural products for export.
Performance of Cooperation and Integration

Trade organization started with GATT in 1947 which changed in 1993 to WTO. It was during this
time that Europe Free Trade went down by 4 percent. The whole of Europe then came up to
protect agricultural goods that are inefficient; as a result Europe has Common Agricultural
Policies (CAP). While iron, textile, ship building, etc are protected in the USA, Canada and
European Union. Globalization came up with a new system of production, subcontracting eg.
Parts of cars are produced in different parts of the world and assembled in one country. These
places are selected because they are efficient producers of those parts of cars.
For regional integration to work, countries should be on the same neighbourhood, have the
same level of politics and economics stage and similar ideology. If countries are not at the same
level then compensation is needed e.g. NAFTA –USA, Canada and Mexico. However, this
cooperation between USA, Canada and Mexico has succeeded in pushing all the polluting and
labour intensive industries to Mexico in the name of helping Mexico.
Three Global Trends of Cooperation and Integration

1. North-North eg. European Trade Union which culminated in 2004
2. North-South e.g. AGOA, NAFTA between USA, Canada and Mexico

3. South-South eg. East African Community (EAC), SADC, etc.
Characteristics of Regional Cooperation and Integration

1. They tend to discriminate the non members. Such cooperation and integration give
exclusionary provision against third parties as there is a tendency of togetherness
among members e.g. European Union (EU) with the Common Agricultural Policies (CAP)
which is to protect European inefficient producers of agricultural products. There is also
the Multi-fibre policies to protect inefficient textile producers.
2. They promote strategic alliance and coordination e.g. EU-ACP (European Union-Africa
Caribbean Pacific), the Cotonou-Lome (Togo)
South-South Cooperation
Some of South-South cooperation's include SADC (Southern African Development Community),
ECOWAS (Economic Cooperation of West African States), COMESA (Common Market of Eastern
and Southern Africa), Arab Magreb Union, Latin America Free Trade Area, Central America
Common Market, Asian Pacific Free Trade Area, etc.
South-South cooperation are numerous but they are also the most inefficient. This is because:
1. They lack commitment or there is little commitment among the leaders
2. Multiplicity of membership in cooperation that need commitment and are often at
different places e.g. Kenya is a member of EAC and SADC
3. Internal structures of these countries are deeply integrated with the North (vertically
integrated but horizontally disintegrated)
4. They tend to forget the role of the Civil Society i.e. people’s representatives
5. Sharing of costs and benefits: usually the weak get little and the stronger get the lion’s
share in the benefits
6. Conflicts put a big toll on these societies i.e. they most often meet to talk about
conflicts/wars instead of development. They also forget that investment should be for
consumption and surplus is for export but we usually do the vice versa. There is no
serious thinking of the needs of these nations.
7. Lack of stability: for these cooperation to work, people need to appreciate the
constitutional change of government otherwise these integrations will always start each
time a government is overthrown.
Unlike in other places, in Africa the market contracts and in such a situation no rational entrepreneur
would like invest> Most of Africans are still trapped in poverty. The leaders therefore should aim at
production for home consumption so as for regional cooperation and integration to work well. They
should mobilize Africans to buy African products and forget the European and East Asian luxurious
products (refer the Infantry Industries Agreement). Countries in Africa should produce for home
market/consumption and use resources they have to produce what they need; demand-driven
production. This is a kind of leadership vision that is needed at the take off stage. Regional cooperation
and integration are important to attain power to bargain as a regional bloc in matters of trade
(economics), politics, etc.

Human, National, Regional and Global Security

In this topic our unit of analysis will be Security. Security and peace have propensity of sticking
close to each other. Security is thus usually counterpoised with threats. Threats in a certain
region can be internal or external, real or imagined. Threats can be community, national,
regional or global. They can be divided into economical, social and environmental, political or
even religious. In order to manage threats, one first has to consider who determines the nature
of threats in particular region. For example, in cities, the municipal authorities decide the
nature of threats. At a global level, political powers make a decision what the threats are and
their natures.
Threats and insecurity are words that can be used interchangeable. At a national level we have
sovereignty state, which has a made to protect its citizens against both internal and external
threats. Thus states enact laws to protect their people, and constitution is the mother of all
these laws. Internally, citizens are protected through different state machinery such as prisons
police and courts. While externally, citizens are protected through defence agreements,
establishment of embassies, national army, territorial integrity (secure borders) and regional
cooperation and integration. Protection through the national army is the most important
among all these but then the size and quality of the army depends on the resources a country
has. The resources that take to defend the airspace, sea and land through information and
analysis of the information reflect the richness and priority of the nation in question.
National security could then be defined as protection of physical integrity of a state against
external threats. Each state usually has nation security policy, which in its preamble mentions
the core national interests as:
1. Protection of citizens against all threats (both internal and eternal).
2. Defence of national integrity (borders)
3. Creation of material conditions for security of life, economic welfare, psychic welfare
and political efficiency.
INSECURITY IN AFRICA
Africa as a whole is insecure and its insecurity can be traced back to colonial legacy and
arbitrary creation of nation boundaries in the Berlin Conference (1884-1885). As consequences
of the arbitrary borders African has:
1. Creations of nationalities within a stat. As a result people cannot evolve values and
identities, thus there is both unit and separation within the same state.
2. Rigid economic structures resulting into having no fast growth, inflexible economies,
internal incoherence and economy linked to outside.
All these lead to societies which are unstable and insecure, society that have no common
values, no common ethos, n common identities, etc. This was carried forward to the post-
independence years, leading to undemocratic states characterised by one part system and
some by military powers. Where they had multiparty system there was a dominance of one

party, like CCM and KANU in Tanzania and Kenya respectively. It was the government in power
that defined what security is. In such environment the nature of insecurity/security is difficult
to define and determine how to deal with.
Security of a country is threatened by internal conflict when there are different opinions over
an issue that is likely to lead to violence i.e. lack of reconciliation in Rwanda. This can as well be
external, such as in the case of the refugees that pose a security problem in Tanzania, due to
the spread of arms over the borders into the country. Even manipulation by major political
powers can be poised as threat to the small states. Others can be unstable neighbouring states,
economic manipulation for example in trade, global terror, weak policies, drugs, etc.
Perceptions and misperceptions of threats (real or imagined) can make loyalty to the
government be divided; but how the threats are ranked depends on the popularity of the ruling
class. Those who took power through coup d’etat or some manipulation in the elections tend to
be paranoid and are likely to confuse imagined threat with real threats.
Globally, it is the UN Security Charter article 24 that gives UN power to defend global security
and peace. The UN has the following organs, the General Assembly which consists of all 191
sovereign states and the UN Security Council which is made by the permanent members who
have the veto power (USA, Russia, UK, France and China. The UN Security Council also has non
permanent members which take in 9 states by regions. Before waging a war a state has to
call/report the issue to the UN Security Council and have the matter tabled.
East African security is internally threatened by economic weakness, lack of democracy, poor managing
of political competition, presence of hegemonic tendencies, absence of political openness and
accountability, Religious fundamentalism, environmental fragility e.g. El-Nino, Tsunami, etc, and weak
social integration (fragmentation). Externally there are threats of political manipulation by major
powers, the unstable neighbourhood, economic manipulation as in trade, investment, capital, debts,
etc. There is also global terror, weak policies such as those of SAPs and EU, environmental threats i.e.
global warming, Tsunami, depletion of ozone layer, etc. The problem of drugs cartels such as narcotics,
heroin, cocaine, marijuana, etc. is another threat to East African countries and Tanzania in particular.
The presence of all these threats points to a need of regional cooperation and integration in order to
fight them.
Review:
In this module we have looked on the reasons for regional cooperation and integration and
Prof. Viner’s theory on Pure Theory of International Trade and how is the theory viable to
African environment. However, Regional cooperation is not only an economic issue but also
political. The presence of different threats in Africa, both internal and external necessitate for
countries to come together in cooperation and integration but with one thing in mind use the
resource to produce internally demanded products and mobilizing people to use those products
against the luxurious goods imported from outside Africa.

1. Discuss how internal and external threats enforce each other to form Africa regional
insecurity.
2. To what extent should Africa rely on South-South economic cooperation?
Resources:
Rugumamu, S. (2005) Globalization Demystified: Africa’s Possible Futures. Dar es Salaam: University
Press
Viner, G. (1997) Studies in the Theory of International Trade. London: Harper and brothers.
Yahya-Othman, S., ed., (2002) Politics, Governance and Cooperation in East Africa. Dar es Salaam:
Mkuki na Nyota Publishers.
TOPIC 5: HEALTH, POPULATION, ENVIRONMENT, DEVELOPMENT AND

SOCIAL SERVICES DELIVERY
An Overview:
Scholars differ on the relationship between health and development and so is the relationship
between population and environment. Some consider health as expenditure therefore they
wait until they are developed in order to spend on health expenditure. Others consider health
as investment into the people, because they believe healthier people can work better and thus
buy products than ill people; these invest on health as they struggle to develop. In the case of
population is the same, some scholars consider population increase to be detrimental to
humanity while others consider population growth as an increase in labour and market. This
leaves us at a cross roads, which way to take. Health, population and environment affect social
services delivery and thus development. This topic will take us through these contending
theories and try to reconcile them for sustainable development.
Introduction:
Available evidence indicates that the lowest child mortality rates occurred in the 1970s.
However, since the mid 1980s, the rate of decline slowed significantly, with some countries
even experiencing reversals in child mortality rates. The increasing burden of debts prevented
countries from allocating national budgets to health, education and other public services. Many
countries resorted to external borrowing to finance debt repayments as well as government
services. These policies of the World Bank and IMF have eroded Africa’s healthcare systems and
intensified the poverty of Africa’s people. Poor health, poverty and population growth have
now so interwoven together that they form a vicious circle, which the policy of cost sharing
makes it even worse.

HEALTH AND DEVELOPMENT
Conceptualization of health
Health is difficult to define
Different attempts have been made by different scholars to define health. One of such attempt
is by Susser, who defines health as a state of normality. To Susser, health implies a state of
normality, which is the absence of abnormality or disorder, absence of deviation from the
mean. Health is what is ideal of what ought to be.
Dimensions of health
a) Organic or physiological: This is defined by the medical profession. For medical profession
physical disorder would constitute symptoms of diseases.
b) Functional dimension: This is a subjective sate of psychological awareness. This is defined by the
individual.
c) Social dimension: This focuses on the socially accepted limitations for individual members to fail
to perform their roles in the society. It is defined by the expectations of the society; culturally
defined (cf. the idea of ED –Exemption from Duty).
Perspectives on Health
Perspectives are views given by different people on health.
1. Medical perspectives
This is the dominant view put forward by the medical people. They equate a human being to a
machine. They say that human bodies are like machines. Someone is health when the body is in
perfect working order. The organs or parts of the machine have to work perfectly, if one part
fails then the whole machine fails. This perspective is also known as engineering model. It goes
on to say that by repairing the parts, the whole can work perfect again. This model take diseases
as natural breakdown of the organs, in other words diseases are changes in the body. The
critical issue here is how the model treats the individual. It is the individuals that are sick thus
they need a cure. The problem is that if this is the case it follows then that diseases are caused
within the individuals and not externally. Yet, professionals would point at the triad of disease
that has 3 aspects, the host, environment and the agent. An individual here is only the host and
not the cause of the disease.
Host
Environment Agent

Because of this perspective the engineering model intervenes by offering curative services, building of
hospitals/clinic system and advancement of technology in medical care.
Criticism:
1. Engineering model of man: A human person is not like a machine thus the cause of diseases
does not lie in the human person. This would be a victim blaming ideology.
2. This model is limited to individual’s diseases (the disease that exist in the host), it does not go to
the cause of disease which exist outside the individual.
3. The model is personal and ahistorical ignoring social nature of health and diseases.
4. It so much emphasizes in the curative services (interventions). It seems to claim that if medical
services are advanced then health will improve, which is not the case.
2. Social perspective
It was started in the 19th century by reformers like Edwin Chadwick. The social perspective claims
Diseases are not simply biological and are not caused within an individual. Diseases are caused socially.
It was from this perspective that in England in the 19th century they started the eradication of polluted
water, vaccination, etc as example of public health movement. Today, it is how people act and behave
how they interact. This perspective then questions the role of medicines. They say if you look at the
morbidity and mortality rate, you will realise that the role is medicine is minimum. The reduction of the
two is a result of improved living standards and nutrition. Attention therefore should be on the
underlying causes of diseases and not treatment.
1. Why diseases occur and not on how they operate after they occur.
2. Checking alternative intervention because treatment is risky.
3. Concern should be on care, prevention than on cure/treatment.
4. Focus must be on environment, both social and physical. There should be concentration on
means to prevent environmental and social risk behaviours.
Criticism:
1. Although change in medical sphere is improved and environmental and social behaviours are
addressed, the problem still persist because the thinking is still on the biological framework.
2. It embraces the apparent anomaly. The context of disease is taken within social organization but
when it comes to cure and care it is still within the biological framework.

3. The causes of diseases differ between medical and social perspective, however the two
perspectives converge on the individual as a primary agent, because the lifestyle can be a risk
factor making an individual to be a responsible agent; thus the social perspective is as well a
victim blaming ideology.
4. Due to preoccupation on lifestyle factors of people, environmental factors are played down.
3. Sociological perspective
This perspective deals with the sociology of health and illness. It claims that health and illness are
related to social structures and social relations. It does not refute medical perspective but it says that is
one way to look at it, there are other ways too. The argument here is that there exist a link between
health and diseases to the structures in which the individual lives. It is those structures that determine
one’s behaviour. The scholars in this perspective then question the monopoly of medical profession. The
physicians focus is on the disease and not on the individual, on curing the disease and not on
prevention, while the attention of medics is on the individual and not on the society as a whole. They
say that the intervention should focus on the society, community’s care, health promotion.
4. Political-economy perspective
This perspective is associated with the Marxists; therefore it is also known as Marxist perspective. It
criticises the sociological perspective in that there exist other structures in the society that affect health.
They claim that illnesses vary with the social classes and sociologists fail to point this out. Things like the
socio-economic and political structures have an influence on health and illness. The specific systems of
material production are responsible for illnesses e.g. the power relations in the society. Scholars such as
Navarro say that illness is a product of social exploitation in the society. The concentration of power in a
capitalist society is already a cause of disease e.g. psychosomatic diseases such as ulcers due to stress,
occupational diseases such as cancer, etc. Therefore in order to regulate health problems, all one has to
do is to control the production process.
This perspective criticises medicine as a state service, thus part and parcel of the capitalism dealing with
effects and not the cause. They thus identify the function of medicine as:
1. To improve the welfare of capitalism and make it acceptable by the society.
2. Legitimization of the consequences of capitalism production. It makes diseases to be acceptable

as unavoidable.
The role of state is questioned as it facilitates capitalism accumulation, thus legitimizing the health
consequences of capitalism production.

In conclusion we can say that health should be seen as one state in continuum and not as either.
Perfect health Determinants Death
In this continuum each of the 3 dimensions of Susser should be taken into account. Thus any measure of
health should take into account the social, political, and economic structures.
Structural Adjustment Policies and Health Sector Reforms
There have been changes in the structures of the economy of the developing world countries. The
argument presented was that African economies and those of other developing world countries have
distortions that need to be ironed out. SAPs therefore were aimed at changing these structures at a
mediate term. The idea was:
1. Expand the production for export:- expand the tradable to balance the goods bought outside
the country.
2. Institutional reforms:- Institutions that should have to facilitated economy are distorted e.g. the
role of state in the economy. Therefore economy should be made more market oriented so as to
reduce the role of the state e.g. in control of prices and the boards are to facilitate production.
The argument is leaving the market alone; let the law of demand and supply decides.
3. Private sector:- The argument of SAPs is that liberalize the economy or economic activities in
order to promote the private sector. This argument centres on neo-liberal ideology that looks at
everything that is public/communal as bad and thus all cooperative institutions are to be
abolished. If they are to exist then they should play a minimal role. Emphasis are on:
- Initiative to shift resources from consumption sector to production sector (investment).

From domestic consumption to export sector.
- Market is efficient in allocation of resources. World Bank (WB), International Monetary Fund
(IMF) being the advocates of SAPs argue that developing countries have comparative
advantage on primary agricultural export products; that private sectors are efficient tool in
the production for competition; that African governments have subsidized a lot and have
overspent in public services i.e. education, health, etc. That parastatal sector has been too
huge, therefore dismantle the public sector and leave private sector to take the lead.
- Due to the reforms on health sector initiated by SAPs especially the introduction of cost
sharing, the poor people do not have access to health services (cf. Lugalla at
web.africa.ufl.edu/asq/v1/2/2.htm). It is important to point out that poverty and health are

now interlinked. Poor people cannot be healthy and the emphasis on production of export
of cash crops leaves little time for food production thus leading to food insecurity.
POPULATION, ENVIRONMENT AND DEVELOPMENT

It is important to link issues of population and environment to the process of development. In
the globalized world people in the developing world are caught up in the vicious cycle of
environmental issues; the second hand cars brought in the developing world from Japan, USA,
Europe, etc are environmental hazards. Transport and communication are important for
development but they too have negative effects on the environment. The refrigerators,
perfumes, and other products have devastating effects on the environment i.e. destruction of
the ozone layer thus global warming.
At the global level we have problem such as disappearance of the Amazon forest, the
hazardous toxic wastes (both solid and liquid) as western governments buy the developing
world leaders to dump the wastes in our countries. In addition there are problems of poor
drainage and pollution (air, water, noise, etc) in both the urban and rural areas. Once can easily
see how Tanzanian roads are littered; how we drink bottled water and juices, eat biscuits and
throw the containers and the plastics bags along the roads.
It is important to point out that environment needs us and we need environment.
However, the question is, does the world think the same way on environmental issues? We
have engaged ourselves in rapid economic growth which has adverse effects on the
environment, e.g. digging of gold, ruby, tanzanite, and other precious stones.
What is environment?
UNESCO (1974) and Cramp (1991) defined environment as the aggregate physical biological
factor and situation that influence human being’s life and their political, economical and
cultural spheres. In 1998 another definition came up and environment was taken as the totality
of people and their surroundings, which includes air, land, water masses, flora of plants and
fauna of animals. Environment refers to people, plants and its fauna, lands, resources, animals,
etc. Environment is linked to sustainable development which is a process where society can
manage resources to fulfil needs of the present and future generations. Asseffa (1991) pointed
out that in the process of development, the relation between man and environment cannot be
ignored. The developing countries if seek to embark in sustainable development it is important
to put environmental concerns at the centre of their development plans. Most development
plans of the developing world counties there is no initiative in environment or there is lack of
seriousness. Many lack environmental policies and plans, those who do have lack the
connection in the overall national development plans and goals. For example, Tanzania
development goal is to promote mining sector but the impact of achieving that goal to the
environment is not reflected. The apparent reason is that there are no clear policies on the
same.
Global Environmental Concern in the 21st Century

Environmental degradation is a concern to both developing and the developed countries.

However, the extent to which the concern is expressed differs from one place to another.
Capitalist countries’ general concern is on how to protect the quality of life already attained;
how to sustain the standard of life, i.e. how to sustain the refrigerators, petroleum usage,
perfumes etc though they have negative effects on the environment. In the developing world
countries like Africa, the concern is on how to find essentials for survival; it is on life itself and
not quality. A peasant farmer looks at how to live, to get firewood and yet not to cause
deforestation. Perhaps because of poverty, in some countries in Africa, the governments care
about revenue and not about the environment. Therefore, we can rightly say that unequal
development leads to differences in concerns on environment. Nonetheless, at the end of the
day it is an issue of life and death to all.
Some of the common concerns that pause obstacles to man’s survival in the 21 st Century and
beyond include:
1. Deforestation: It is a problem all around the world. Even where it is not yet a problem
the impact will soon be felt.
2. Pollution: Air pollution from industries, urbanization and our ramshackle vehicles. In
addition the water pollution caused by industries waste, human waste being dumped in
the water bodies, bad fishing practices like dynamite fishing which makes clean reliable
water to be scarce.
3. Land degradation: due to mining, soil erosion which makes farming impossible.
4. Global warming\climate change
5. Drought: making land turning into desert and semi-arid areas
6. Depletion of natural resources
7. Bio-diversity
8. Waste disposal and management
1. Deforestation
Deforestation simply means the cutting down or disappearance of forest eco-system
leading to disastrous social, economic, and political consequences. These consequences
would include the disappearance of species of trees, mechanical damage of trees, flooding,
soil erosion, loss of vegetation cover, increasing wood supply distance and sociological
consequences such as urbanization, as the rural areas cannot sustain all the people. In the
world today, there is a pressing land use problem as the world face deforestation at a
remarkable speed. Litrinoff (1990) points out that more than 30 percent of the world
forests have already been deforestated. Most damage took place during the last 40-45
years. In the early 1990s alone about 40 percent of the forest in the world has been
converted to permanent pasture or crop land. Deforestation takes place more in the
developing world countries where it is estimated that 11 million hectares of tropical forests
are being lost and this will increase to more than twice in the next 20 years. In recent years,
over half of deforestation is taking place in Latin America where 10 percent of the Amazon
forest is already gone. However, Africa is the most severely deforestated continent, where
forests are cleared 20 times faster than they are being planted in the early 1990s; compared
to 10.5 in tropical America and 4.5 in tropical Asia.

1.1 Why the problem is more in Africa?

If we critically look at why this huge problem in Africa, we realize that it is contributed by
both external as well as internal factors. Despite all other factors, the major cause of
deforestation in Africa is poverty. There are few people who cut trees because of cultural
beliefs e.g. they believe that trees are evil. Even the external causes are linked to poverty
and capitalism which is selfish and short sighted on the impact of deforestation that will be
felt all around the globe (cf. USA refusal to sign the Kyoto conversion cf. Mwandosya, 2000).
Internal factors would include weak/poor government will, lack of policies on

environmental conservation, and management issues. Tanzania for example has lost
approximately 10,000 hectares from 1981-1985, which is 0.4 percent loss annually.
Depletion of the forest is a concern for environment and development in the developing
world countries especially those countries of sub-Saharan Africa. Unsustainable use of the
forests leads to land degradation (soil erosion, desertification, loss of productivity which
leads to declining yields in Africa where poor farmers earn a living from the land).
Deforestation affects water catchments areas and water shade. Scarcity of fuel such as
firewood, charcoal, etc makes African women walk for a long distance to look for firewood
thus reducing time to attend to other things. This problem becomes bigger as the costs for
alternative source of energy e.g. electricity, gas, etc increases daily. With globalization,
commercial logging has become a big problem, as logs are transported outside the
countries to be transformed into furniture that are again brought back to be sold in this
country at a very high cost.
Causes of deforestation differ from one place to another. However, some are common
which include:
 Permanent clearing of the forest for agricultural use, which is linked to
population growth especially in Africa.
 Harvesting of fuel wood and charcoal, this again is linked to population
growth both in urban and rural areas.
 Commercial logging so as to be transported outside the country for
financial gains in the era of globalization.
 Creation of dams and digging for oil (not yet a problem in Tanzania).
 Mining projects
 Expansion of urban and industrial areas
 Overgrazing e.g. Maasai
 Fodder collection for animals that are kept in door. Most of deforestation
is blamed on small farmers due to shifting cultivation. Usually this practice is
associated with ignorance; however the overall cause is poverty. To survive farmers
are forced to cut down trees but they do so only because they are victims of poverty
and unjust land tenure system.
 Refugees can also be causes of deforestation in areas where refugees’
camps are located e.g. Ngara, Kigoma. However, even the conflicts that cause the
problem of refugees are linked to poverty.

 Lack of dynamic policies by governments to guard the forests, where the

policies are present, they are not implemented.
 Marginalization of farmers in such a way that there is inability to mobilize
them as a force against deforestation.
Pre-colonial Africa had little or no deforestation. The moving agriculture allowed land and
forest to rejuvenate, thus there was harmonious organic co-existence. People took only what
they needed and respected the forests and trees to the extent of worshipping. Colonialism can
be traced as basic cause of deforestation. Commercial logging and limited furrow were
introduced so as to allow permanent settlements. Introduction of cash crops economy
attributed to deforestation. Rodney (1972) gave an example of tobacco contributing heavily to
deforestation of sub-Saharan Africa. So did cotton, sisal, etc. He talks of Zambia where the
system of furrowing was reduced to half thus 7 years from 14 years which was due to high
demand which led to appropriation of arable land leading to deforestation. Experiences in post-
colonial Africa show that deforestation has spread. Today deforestation is a major threat to the
survival of human beings and all other animals in the planet. Drought, particularly in Sudan and
Ethiopia is linked to deforestation. Nkonoki (1991) argues that deforestation is a big problem
due to dwindling of energy sources and resources.
1.2 Possible Solution

1. African countries should take stock of the situation to see how big the problem is. This
can be done at a country or regional level.
2. Then find out what are the underlying causes of the problem. It is only after identifying
the causes can we go to form dynamic policies that are based on actual situation and
strategy to implement policies.
3. Address the problem of poverty which is the main cause of deforestation.
4. Gender issues in the society need to be looked at, especially the empowerment of
women as they are the main user and collector of fuel as well as the producers.
5. Increased investment in terms of resources both human and physical i.e. skilled
manpower and planting of trees.
6. Deforestation has external component i.e. commercial logging; therefore solution
should as well be external. International community should help African countries to
prevent/protect their forests.
7. Above all we need joint action at national and international level. Farmers must be
mobilized to protect forests. Governments and NGOs should join hands to create
awareness: campaigns, knowledge, and skills that would help to combat deforestation.
People (in both urban and rural areas) have a key role to play against deforestation.
8. Introduction and use of alternative sources of energy i.e. gas, electricity, kerosene, solar
energy, etc. However, these sources should be affordable and accessible by the majority
poor.
9. Introduction of better agricultural methods such as better land use methods.
2. Pollution

Pollution can be said to mean contamination of air, water, or earth by harmful substances.
Pollution can be in different forms such as air, water, noise, visual (litter, rubbish, billboards,
auto-junk yards, etc.), and light, just to mention few. The 20 th and 21st centuries have seen
pollution crisis appropriate throughout the world. The crisis is acute in the developing world
countries and is connected to such for development, advances in science and technology
and life style e.g. the advent of automobiles, chemical wastes in industries and homes (the
age of nuclear and its wastes). The accumulation of garbage in the land is a common feature
in some poor countries. Consequently the developed world countries have taken pollution
to be high in their agenda and have introduced major measures through legislations on
automobiles, machines, industries, etc. However, in the developing world there is still little
awareness of the environmental problem and few regulations exist that are not even
implemented.
2.1 Water Pollution

Water pollution is a major threat to human existence. Water which takes 70 percent of the
world surface is important resource that exists. Without water life is affected. However,
people disregard water by polluting the rivers, lakes, oceans and other water masses by
making it unfit thus harming ourselves and other creatures in the process. Ten years ago
one could drink water from a river; today most of the rivers are polluted. The substances
that pollute water are called pollutants and can exist in different forms such as sewage
system, plants nutrients that stimulate growth of aquatic life which interfere with water
usage and decay that produces pollution; fertilizers containing nutrients such as phosphate;
soil (mud) that is washed into the rivers and lakes. Sewage is a major pollutant together
with industrial wastes. Petroleum that spills in the oceans and other water bodies is another
form, in addition to radioactive substances from the waste of uranium and nuclear power
plants, industries, medical plants, and scientific uses. Sources of water pollution can be
classified into municipal pollutants, industrial and agricultural pollutants. Municipal
pollutants are wastes from homes and commercial establishments. Industrial pollutants are
those from industries especially in developing world countries. Agricultural pollutants
include chemicals such as fertilizers and the medication we give to livestock/poultry that
produce organic and inorganic substances.
The problem of water pollution is acute in the developing world especially Africa. Only few
countries in Africa have legislations to control water pollution. In many countries you will
see raw sewage entering the water bodies e.g. areas around Salander Bridge in Dar es
Salaam and some areas in Mwanza that meet Lake Victoria. There is also the problem of
dumping of garbage into the water masses. This leads to lack of safe drinking water. It
seems there is little or no awareness of the danger of water pollution in the developing
countries especially in the rural are3as. Few know that though water appears clean, it can
still be contaminated. Thus there is little effort to boil water in the rural areas and in urban
areas boiling water is expensive, only few can afford it thus there is limited means to
address the problem. As consequences, there is lack of safe drinking water, diseases,
illnesses and deaths attributed to waterborne are on the increase. Human health is greatly
affected by water pollution especially in the rural areas. Other organisms such as fish are

also affected. The problem has serious impacts because the more water we require, the
more possibility to pollute it.
2.1.1 How can we address the problem

a. Countries should take stock/critical assessment of the situation/problem. This is to
assess how serious the problem is already. Here we need scientific reliable data from
the environmentalists.
b. Put laws and regulations/legislations and by-laws to combat pollution. We need clear
guidelines and the government to take a leading role in seeing that legislations are
implemented especially in this era of globalization. Policies should be implemented to
make sure that owners of industries and large scale farming (private sector) do not
pollute the water masses.
c. However, the government alone cannot solve the problem. Other key stakeholders
should be involved, especially in spreading the awareness on the problem.
d. General public should learn how to dispose household harmful wastes, thus there
should be sewage treatment to handle sewage before disposal.
e. Farmers should learn ways to effectively use fertilizers that would not be washed into
the water bodies.
f. Equip people with simple knowledge of preserving the existing trees and plant new ones
to prevent soil erosion that pollute water. Awareness and education are critical in
preventing water pollution and pollution in general.
g. Global initiatives are required as water pollution knows no boundaries. International
communities like UN and other international organizations have to put in laws and
regulations and make sure that they are enforced. The developed and developing
countries have to work together. Politicians across the globe have to think of
sustainable development rather than economic expansion (e.g. industrialization, mining)
that cause water pollution. Water pollution is a global concern but at the moment is
treated as a national or regional problem. Recently actions have been started to be
global as world water day was introduced. However, developed nations are concerned
of their prosperity while the developing nations are faced by acute poverty and diseases
thus leaving little time to address pollution (cf. Brundtland Commission, 1987;
http://home.att.net/~slomansonb/Bruntland.html).
2.2 Air Pollution

Air is the essence of life. It is the kind of ocean we live in. it supplies us with oxygen we need to
survive. Air is 99.9 percent nitrogen; other components include oxygen, water, etc. Human
activities can release substances that can be a problem to man, animals and plants. Release of
particles in the air by burning fuel for energy such as wood, charcoal, automobile engines, etc
are major sources of air pollution.
Air pollution is a major problem in the globe in such that climate is affected, however
developed countries have managed to put a number of legislations to control pollution thus no
cars older than 5 years are allowed on the roads and industrial pollutants are minimized. In
developing countries especially Africa, the problem has not been taken seriously. Few rules

exist and vehicles and industries that pollute the air are vast. Even those few rules that exist are
not implemented at times. Air pollution is also in our homes, offices, schools, etc where we
smoke, cook, etc.
In most African countries, cooking is done inside (indoor), yet the outdoor pollution is serious.
In Tanzania, for example indoor pollution is devastating and a threat to health. In Shinyanga
women cook inside and thus it is not strange then that their eyes become red, not only that
inhaling of smoke leads to chest problems, the red eyed women are murdered or chased away
from the village because having red eyes is interpreted as a sign of being a witch.
2.2 Noise Pollution

Noise can be from industries, entertainment, homes, etc. This problem is taken seriously in the
developed countries. In Tanzania bars and night clubs are in the middle of the resident areas
thus causing a lot of noise disturbances to those living around the areas. In general Tanzania
needs to put noise pollution high in the agenda.
Population, Environment and Development: The Link
The last 100 years has witnessed rapid population growth and lot of alarms, concerns have
arisen especially in the developing countries. Prophets of doom, led by Rev. Thomas Malthus
believe that population growth is a bad omen. Malthus believes that population growth will
bring catastrophe, actually it is a ticking bomb which is likely to blow any time with devastating
effects. Neo-Malthusians argue that it population growth has caused every problem in the
globe. As a result popular media associate famine, poverty in Africa, Asia and Latin America
with overpopulation. Political instability and revolutions are linked to population growth; the
argument is that more people a country has, the more unstable it will be. Environmental
degradation, family break-down, street kids, women inferiority, economic failure are all linked
to population growth.
Few argue that population growth is important for development and this group is led by Karl
Marx. Neo-Marxists today point to China and India as examples of countries that were able to
have rapid development amidst population growth. Population for them is not an obstacle but
a force for development. The problem is argued to be unequal distribution of wealth. Wealth
countries are urged to reduce their consumption and distribute wealth equitably. It is also
pointed out that America and Europe undertook industrialization at the age of population
growth. The argument therefore is, if Europe and America could so can Africa and other
developing countries of the world.
The question we are posing here is: is rapid population growth a serious threat to the
environment? Unlike the conventional Malthusian the danger that affects only those
concerned, the environment-population synthesis represents it as a threat to everyone. Christa
Wichterich argues that people in the developing countries injure themselves by population
growth by disturbing the ecological balance and in a long run will also affect the developed
countries. She claims that population pressure that leads to environmental degradation in one
part of the globe will eventually pose a danger to the rest of the globe. In short the argument is
that population growth contributes to environmental destruction. This line of thinking can be
observed in many of the international reports on environment e.g. Our Global Neighbourhood,
a report of commission of global governance (www.gdrc.org/u-gov/global-
neighbourhood/index.htm). It gives a vision of the world being endangered by having too
many human beings. They argue on the basis that evidence has accumulated on widespread
ecological degradation resulting from human activities e.g. soil erosion, lose of fertility,
overgrazed grasslands, desertification, dwindling fisheries, shrinking forests, polluted air and
water that have been joined by climatic change and ozone layer depletion, all threatening the
earth to be less habitable and more hazardous.
The underlying logic is that population is the cause of all environmental crisis. This line of
argument has become dominant theme in demographic discourses. Paul Enrlich (1971) was the
most high profile advocate of this line of thought. In 1971 he said too many cars, factories,
pesticides, too little water; much carbon-dioxide can be easily traced to existence of too many
human beings. Many others took this line of thought. We do not have a problem with that, yes,
we have too many cars but how many people own those cars? Probably just a handful. Too
many factories, true, but probably few people own, work in those factories and probably even
use the products. Even the pesticides have no direct link to population growth. This kind of
approach fails to look at historical causes of degradation such as colonialism and its legacy i.e.
agricultural system that harm the environment and existing sate of dependence where our
economies are controlled by developed world. Liberalization, free market economy,
globalization, etc have effects on our environments. All these factors are ignored. To
understand environmental problems, one has to take a historical approach. Matthew takes an
external factor, while Christa thinks that the developing world’s overpopulation affects the
developed world, forgetting the external causes of degradation in the developing countries.
One can argue that most of the environmental problems i.e. pollution, land degradation,
deforestation, etc are linked to the economic policies of the developed countries. The
developed countries are the main creator of the environmental problems and the developing
world countries are only used as testing ground or dumping ground for toxic wastes such as
nuclear wastes. One has to therefore, critically re-examine the contention that the rapid
population growth rate is linked to environmental problems. It is true that developing
countries, especially those in Africa have high population growth rate, what is questionable is
the link. The fact is that mortality rate is also high especially in infant. Most children die before
the age of 5 years and others die before 30 years due to diseases such as malaria, HIV/AIDS,
etc. Life expectancy in most developing world countries is also low (in Tanzania is around 43-45
years), adding to the mortality rate is the problems of reckless driving, the food we eat, the life
style, etc. All these make the threat that is said to be posed by population growth questionable.
Review:
In this module we have looked at the different conceptions of health and how they can affect
the concept of development and the how business can affect health. We realize that to spend
on health is spending on labour investment, thus we should not wait until we are rich in order

to invest on health. We have also looked at different theories on population growth and their
effects on developing countries, Africa in particular. The bottom line is whatever development
we seek, it is important that it does not negatively affect our environments. To control
population in poor countries we need to do away with poverty which affects both environment
and health.
Population concerns are central in economic growth and prosperity hence they cannot be
ignored. Using relevant examples, discuss this statement from different contending
perspectives.
Resources:
Ehrlich, Paul R. (1971) The population bomb. New York: Ballantine Books.
Hassim, A., M. Heywood and J. Berger, eds. (2007) Health and Democracy: A guide to human rights,
health law and policy in post-apartheid South Africa. Cape Town: Siber Ink
Lucas, D. (2003) Population Policy and Advocacy at Population theories.pdf
Mbirigenda, S. (2005) Health and Development: A relation at crossroads at Health and Development at
crossroads.pdf
Mbirigenda, S. (2005) Globalization and the Developing World’s Environment at Globalization and
Developing World's Environment.pdf
Mwandosya, M.J. (2000) Survival Emissions: A Perspective from the South on Global Climate Change
Negotiations. Dar es Salaam: Dar es Salaam University Press.

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DS 102: Development Perspectives II

TOPIC 1: AGRARIAN TRANSFORMATION AND RURAL DEVELOPMENT

Land reform - reorganization of landholding and tenure structures.

Shukrani K. Mbirigenda (Institute of Development Studies-IDS, University of Dar es Salaam) 1

What do we mean by the terms rural development and agricultural transformation?

Development is therefore a process of developing or being developed.

Shukrani K. Mbirigenda (Institute of Development Studies-IDS, University of Dar es Salaam) 2

Why study rural development and agricultural transformation?

Studying rural development and agricultural transformation is therefore important for

Poverty dynamics – becoming poor, staying poor, and escaping poverty

The chronically poor include

Shukrani K. Mbirigenda (Institute of Development Studies-IDS, University of Dar es Salaam) 3

poverty line, but who are not poor in every period.

The transitory poor, who include:

Role of Agriculture in Economic Development

1) Product Contribution: The expansion of the non-agricultural sector is strongly reliant

Shukrani K. Mbirigenda (Institute of Development Studies-IDS, University of Dar es Salaam) 4

strategy of rapid industrialization without parallel development in

Shukrani K. Mbirigenda (Institute of Development Studies-IDS, University of Dar es Salaam) 5

Shukrani K. Mbirigenda (Institute of Development Studies-IDS, University of Dar es Salaam) 6

 The supplies and price of non-labour

Linking Development Theory and Rural Development over time

The 1950s – 1960s

The 1970s and 1980s

 Primary health care and

The 1990s and early 2000s

Shukrani K. Mbirigenda (Institute of Development Studies-IDS, University of Dar es Salaam) 8

Agrarian Reform and Rural Development in Tanzania

Shukrani K. Mbirigenda (Institute of Development Studies-IDS, University of Dar es Salaam) 9

Shukrani K. Mbirigenda (Institute of Development Studies-IDS, University of Dar es Salaam) 10

Problems with Plan Implementation

Shukrani K. Mbirigenda (Institute of Development Studies-IDS, University of Dar es Salaam) 11

Shukrani K. Mbirigenda (Institute of Development Studies-IDS, University of Dar es Salaam) 12

a remarkable amount of audacity in criticizing the foreign policy of Western countries

Shukrani K. Mbirigenda (Institute of Development Studies-IDS, University of Dar es Salaam) 13

Definition of Food Security

Shukrani K. Mbirigenda (Institute of Development Studies-IDS, University of Dar es Salaam) 14

Shukrani K. Mbirigenda (Institute of Development Studies-IDS, University of Dar es Salaam) 15

A number of countries in sub-Saharan Africa are plagued with poor macro-economic

7. Globalization and the Role of World Trade Organization (WTO)

Shukrani K. Mbirigenda (Institute of Development Studies-IDS, University of Dar es Salaam) 16

Shukrani K. Mbirigenda (Institute of Development Studies-IDS, University of Dar es Salaam) 17

URT (1999) National Land Policy. Dar es Salaam: Government Printer.

TOPIC 2: SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY AND INDUSTRIALIZATION

Shukrani K. Mbirigenda (Institute of Development Studies-IDS, University of Dar es Salaam) 18

SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

It can be observed that technological development can be considered to have impact in

Shukrani K. Mbirigenda (Institute of Development Studies-IDS, University of Dar es Salaam) 19

Technology can be defined as application of scientific knowledge to solve practical problems

The Relationship between Science, Technology and Society

Shukrani K. Mbirigenda (Institute of Development Studies-IDS, University of Dar es Salaam) 20

Factors for the Development of Science and Technology in a Country

b) Precondition is also the question of legal and administrative framework of science

Shukrani K. Mbirigenda (Institute of Development Studies-IDS, University of Dar es Salaam) 21

Human resource development is a process of building up knowledge, working abilities,

Shukrani K. Mbirigenda (Institute of Development Studies-IDS, University of Dar es Salaam) 22

Technological Innovation is the local production systems, which are definable as

Science, Technology and Development in the Developing World

Technical Dependency of the Developing World