-Caveat Lector- Progress Means Full Shops, Empty Pockets Africa News Service 17-JUN-99 Dar-es-Salaam (The East African, June 17, 1999) - Talk of Musoma town and people automatically know you are referring to Mwalimu Julius Nyerere's native district. The town is itself no more than a small fishing port on the shores of Lake Victoria. Last week, Mwalimu decided to bring some national activity to Musoma. Through the Nyerere Foundation, of which he is chairman, he hosted a workshop there. Participants from academia, religious institutions and NGOs were asked to share thoughts on devel opment in Tanzania. More specifically, they were expected to brainstorm on "the way forward". With each passing day, I get more confused about Tanzania's development. Food rationing is now so rare that the word kaya, which signified that system, has vanished from everyday speech. Small-time racketeering in foreign currency is today unthinkable; it's the big "mafia style" operations which continue to prevail. Almost all schoolchildren, at least in Dar-es-Salaam, wear shoes. In general, more goods and services are available today than they were a decade ago. The flip side of this coin is that while in the past there was liquidity without goods, today goods are available but there is no liquidity. Retrenchment has led to a high level of unemployment. Officialdom has assiduously avoided publishing employment figures over the past few years. Pupils may be better dressed but estimates have it that about 50 per cent of schooling children stay at home. Those who do attend school do not get any education worth talking about. Teachers meanwhile augment their salaries through private tuition. In effect, parents now pay two separate sets of fees for the same child. The first is paid officially to the school and the second directly to the teacher. More often than not, the same teacher doubles up as the private tutor. This is recommended by the teachers themselves - they claim to know their pupils better. What happens is that the pupils are allowed to play around during official classes, then at the end of the day the teacher delivers the "tuition" in the same classroom. Mwalimu and his workshop will have a tough task defining Tanzania's development. Is the country moving forward - with these problems being mere side-effects? Or is it breaking in two down the middle, with the pieces floating away in opposite directions : one to prosperity, the other to disaster? Perhaps the best place to begin would be with the concept of development itself and the terms it can be measured in. The indices would include national income per capita, average calorie consumption per day, percentage of households with a television s et, electricity or running water. On such a basis, it would be easy to show that Tanzania has made impressive strides. Liberalisation of the economy has flooded the market with goods of all kinds. Sharp competition has meant cheaper goods of a high quality. Another way of looking at development is through the lives of the people. Here, the indices are the manner in which the "needs of life" are produced; the kinds of activities people can afford - reading books/newspapers, going on holiday; infant mortali ty rates, life expectancy and how widely available social services such as education, health and so on are. Should Tanzanians choose the way of "things", they will be like the oil sheikhdoms which, though rich in money, to this day are yet to be described as developed countries. Michael Okema is a political scientist based in Dar-es-Salaam. E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Publication Date: June 16 - June 22 By Michael Okema Copyright 1999 The East African. Distributed via Africa News Online. ================================= Robert F. 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