Day 9-10: Mikumi National Park

Friday 3/21/08 - Saturday 3/22/08

What a great way to end this fantastic trip - a visit to the Safari - Mikumi National Park. Among many elephants, giraffes, hippos we were lucky to spot a beautiful lion cub. Enjoy photos!

Day 8: TASAF projects

Thursday 3/20/08

Tanzanian Social Action Fund (TASAF) is a government institution to empower communities, facilitate their participation in planing and implementation of interventiosn that would improve their livelihood. Their budgets are financed from three main sectors: IDA, Government and Community.

Some of their achievement include:

- 2,600 classrooms
- 670 teachers houses
- 312 out-patient department
- 204 community access roads



We've traveled to couple of their project sites - Kisutu, a tailoring and hand craft; Yombo - a poultry production. Both places employe people affected by HIV.

Day 7: 2nd visit at UDSM

Wednesday 3/19/08


This time at UDSM discussions were focused on the social entrepreneurship. Dr. Olomi, Director & Senior Lecturer from the Entrepreneurship Center shared key opportunities and challenges in Tanzania and Bruce Bachenheimer on the social entrepreneurship in the US.

Three main pillars of Social Entrepreneurship:
1. Sociality
2. Market Orientation
3. Innovation

Here is a slide of examples of SE in Tanzania:


Images: Professor Bruce Bachenheimer and Donath Olomi during presentations.

Day 7: Ministry of Industry, Trade and Marketing

Wednesday 3/19/09

Ministry of Industry, Trade and Marketing is a very modern building. We were given three different presentations - about Policy and Planning, then the role of Small Medium Enterprises (SME), and about SIDO-Small Industries development organization.

Slides screen shots about the role of the government, civil society and weak BDS (Business Development services).

Day 7: TechnoServe

Wednesday 3/19/08

Yet another busy and an exciting day! Morning started with Alex Mkindi, the Deputy Country Director of TechnoServe in Tanzania who traveled for 13 hours just to meet with us. Alex discussed TechnoServe and its role in private sector development in Tanzania.

TechnoServe is an NGO based in Washington DC that has 39 years of experience in Latin America and Africa. They help entrepreneurs to realize their business ideas and create better communities. They recently received a $46.9 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation as well as a grant from Google.org

Their philosophy is: “Private enterprise can drive economic growth and positive social change. A hand up is better than a hand out.”

TechnoServe applied tailored approaches to three African industries to sustain and grow industry competitiveness:

1. Banana: COLLAPSED: (Kenya) It’s value chain was long and involved several middlemen which was distancing the farmer from the value received farther down the chain

2. Coffee: UPGRADED: (Tanzania) The coffee value chain was compact, resulting in a low-quality commodity product, which was then sold through the auction for lower prices

3. Cashews: RATIONALIZED: (Mozambique) The cashew value chain needed to be “rationalized”, it was a confused value chain under great scrutiny and pressure, with much of the raw product being exported before any value addition

Most farmers gained their skills from their predecessors and new agricultural techniques were rarely applied. Farmers spend most of their income early and don’t safe money for hard times. There is a lack of processing facilities. They don't benefit from the whole crop. For instance they only use cashew nut but the fruit-apple that can produce jams, liquor, or chutneys goes to waste. Or they sell raw cashews to India where processing facilities enable businesses to use shell liquid to produce various end products. But farmers in Tanzania don’t benefit from this additional value. TechnoServe is there to help farmers to address and improve these issues.

TechnoServe works with local governments and helps to change the value chain of these industries as well as educating farmers. They formed farmer’s business schools - educate them on negotiating skills, efficient packing of perishable goods, transporting goods without using middlemen, maintaining the cashew nuts trees or on diversifying new crop (e.g. growing sesame seeds during off-season.) As a result, farmers would get higher income, parents can send their children to schools and communities would improve.

Image: Alex Mkindi during the presentation; Cashew apple and nut (Did you know that cashew trees last for 25 years?)

Day 6: University of Dar

Tuesday 3/18/08

We spend the whole day at the University of Dar es Salaam (UDSM). Their campus is located 13 km northwest of the city center and sits on 1,600 acres of vast greenery where monkeys are a common sight. Students sitting in groups under trees share course materials that are often not available to them. We had a short bus tour of the campus and its history. In 1960 UDSM used to be a part of University of East Africa (others located in Kenya and Uganda) with a focus on law. Even now UDSM has the largest law faculty in the region. We visited Entrepreneurship department that was established in 1999. UDSM has around 20,000 enrolled students, 2500 post-graduates, 35% of them are women. 16% of post-graduate students run their own business. They also have a very high graduation rate - 80%. In 2007 they established the Alumni Society and we learn Reginald Mengi is a member.

The school needs faculty staff and encourages post-graduate students to teach. To become a full professor you need to follow these stages: 1) tutor assistant - usually MBA students with a minimum GPA of 4 (out of 5) 2) assistant lecturer with a Master degree 3) Lecturer with a PhD. 4) Senior lecture 5) associate professor 6) full professor.

Current job demands in Tanzania are in accounting and finance. Marketing department is not much developed; they lack graduates and don't offer many courses. They should expand this program considering they are in high demand for quality customer service.

Our first lecture by Mr. Kingazi was on "Opportunities and Challenges for Private sector Development in Tanzania. Here is a brief history of private sectors since Tanzania's Independence:

1961: Tanganyika

1964: Tanganyika + Zanzibar + Pemba = Tanzania

1967-1985: Socialism

1986-1995: Economic Liberalization and privatization.

1996 - Present: Implementation of Private Sector strategy. Private sector recognized.

They formed Business Trade Associations overseeing private sectors and government policy. Some important facts about different sectors:

1) Agriculture - 46% of country's GDP

- Beef processing in demand (currently only 1)

- Poultry Industry - 3 processing plants in place

- Beekeeping - problems with quality control, no standards

2) Mining 3% (poor managing; handled by Anglo-American group)

3) Tourism 25% (one of the most growing sectors)

4) Manufacturing 9%

5) Telecommunication

6) Banking - only 9% of eligible are served

7) Education & Health services - emerging markets

There is an agency Tanzania Investment Center (TIC) - investors guide to Tanzania.

In the afternoon we met with a delegate from the CEO Roundtable. It's a group of 40 CEOs from various industries that works with the government on creating a better business environment. Current major challenges are corruption and administrative bureaucracy. There is a slow process and it can take 145 days to receive a trade license. Many of us saw corruption as a major obstacle in investing in Tanzania.

There was so much we learn today and I enjoyed interacting with students. One student owns a tourist company that targets mostly Europeans and Russians. He also has a mango farm but can't export to western countries due to the size of the fruit. For now he exports to South Africa where they make fruit juices (perhaps Ceres).

Image: Post-graduate students of Dar and I.

Day 5: We were the News!

Monday 3/17/08

This evening we had a 4 minutes coverage on the Tanzanian local TV news. Enjoy (it's in Swahili).



Next day, we were still "famous" - an article in Mengi's newspaper The Guardian.