KEYNOTE
SPEECH BY DR. JAKAYA MRISHO KIKWETE, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED REPUBLIC OF
TANZANIA, DURING THE USAID FORUM ON “FRONTIERS IN DEVELOPMENT: ENDING EXTREME
POVERTY”, 19TH SEPTEMBER, 2014, WASHINGTON, D.C
Honourable Dr. Rajiv Shah, USAID Administrator;
Honourable Mr. Mark Diop, Vice President of the
World Bank;
Distinguished Participants;
Ladies and Gentlemen;
Allow me to
begin by thanking you Dr. Rajiv Shah for inviting me to participate in this
Forum and for affording me the opportunity to share my thoughts on its very
important theme of Ending Extreme Poverty.
I commend the USAID for initiating this debate, and I hope participants will
come up with pertinent proposals about ways and means to end this human
degrading condition of our time. For those of us who live with this reality in
our countries, it is heartwarming, indeed, to see that there are friends out
here who care about the plight of the poorest and are ready to do what it takes
to erase this scourge from the face of this planet.
Distinguished
Participants;
Ladies and Gentlemen;
The
World Bank Report on End Extreme Poverty
and Promote Shared Growth (2013) tells us that globally poverty has
declined rapidly over the past three decades since 1990. In this regard, some 700 million people have moved above the US$ 1.25 poverty line but about 1.2 billion still live under conditions of extreme poverty. Out of the 1.2 billion people, more than 750
million live on less than US$ 1.0
a day and nearly 150 million others live
on less than US$ 0.50 a day. Similarly,
around 800 million are faced with
hunger or have inadequate food supply and, 500
million of them, suffer from chronic malnutrition.
It
is good to note that the world has been able to achieve the Millennium Development Goal No.1 of
reducing by half the number of
people who live under extreme poverty. Indeed, poverty rate in developing
countries has been reduced from 43.1
percent in 1990 to 20.6 percent
by 2010. This achievement shows that it is possible to eradicate poverty in the
world. However, this achievement has not been uniform across the developing world.
China and India accounted for most of the success and nearly half of the poor
live in 20 countries in South Asia,
Sub-Saharan Africa and East Asia and the Pacific.
Ladies and Gentlemen;
The
challenge of overcoming extreme poverty is an overwhelming one in Africa. Africa
is home to 33 of the 48 world’s least developed countries
(LDCs). Moreover, in 2010 more than one-third of Sub-Saharan African
countries had an extreme poverty rate of more than 50 percent. Among them, 12
countries had an extreme poverty rate of above 60 percent and 4
countries that are fragile and affected by conflicts were above 80 percent. This condition has not
changed much today as we speak.
Ladies and Gentlemen;
Clearly,
political stability is an important factor in the fight against extreme
poverty. Conflicts worsen the poverty situation. Conflicts disrupt economic
activities, scare away investments and cause destruction of property including
productive assets as well as social and economic infrastructure. Unfortunately, Africa has had an unfair share
of conflicts. Very few African countries have enjoyed uninterrupted peace in
the five decades of Africa’s independence from colonial rule. Of the 33 least developed countries from
Africa 25 have gone through some form of conflict. Even the non LDCs in Africa have
not been spared. Consequently, lack of peace and stability has been a critical
factor in Africa’s slow pace towards poverty reduction.
Paradoxically,
even those countries which have had no conflicts have not done very well
either. The pace of poverty reduction
has been muted. In my view, this is very much a function of the economic
policies pursued, in the first two and half, decades since independence. They
caused stagnation of economic growth and some economies actually shrank thus
aggravating the poverty situation among the people. The turnaround began in the
second half of the 1990s after the economic reforms introduced in the mid 1980s
began to take effect. The extent of the
turnaround depended on the success of the reforms. Likewise, the extent of poverty reduction
depended on the success of the reform agenda and the level of poverty the
country was in at the beginning of the reforms. It also depended on external
environment in particular the global economic architecture which has not been
so kind to poor nations and poor people in the developing world.
Ladies and Gentlemen;
My
dear country Tanzania is a typical example of a country that enjoyed uninterrupted
peace and stability since independence yet we are one of the LDCs from 1971
when LDCs classification started. Besides a hostile global environment, economic
policies pursued soon after independence which did not succeed has a big hand
in this state of affairs. As a matter of
fact, the economy declined to dangerous lows. Things began to change after the
introduction of economic reforms from the 1980s. We have stayed the cause of
reforms ever since with remarkable success.
The country is now enjoying strong macro-economic performance with the
last decade being exceptionally successful.
Overall
economic growth has increase from an average of 3.5 percent in the 1990s to the average of about 7 percent over the last decade. Despite
this growth, poverty reduction has not been correspondingly impressive. In the
last two decades income poverty declined from 39 percent in 1990 to 28.2
percent in 2012, a decline of about 11
percent only. This explains why we will not be able to meet
the MDG target of halving extreme poverty below the 1990 baseline by 2015.
However, we have been successful with regard to reducing by a half the
proportion of population living below the national food poverty line. This
declined from 21.6 percent in 1990
to 9.7 percent in 2012, a decline of
about 12 percent.
Distinguished
Participants;
Ladies and Gentlemen;
Our
income poverty reduction efforts have not borne the expected results mainly
because our growth has not been high enough in sectors that support the majority
of the people, especially the poor. The
fast growing sectors and their ten-year average growth rates (2004 – 2013) were
the following: (1) Services (8.0%) driven
by Telecommunication (20.2%), Financial Services (10.8%) and Trade (8.2%); (2) Industry (8.5%) comprising of
Construction (9.6%), Manufacturing (8.6%) and Mining (8.2%). Unfortunately, agriculture, which supports
about 75 percent of our population
in terms of employment and livelihood, grew at an average
of only 4.2 percent in the last decade.
Ladies and Gentlemen;
The
low growth in agriculture explains why the pace of poverty reduction has not
been fast enough as expected. We have been taking action to transform and
modernize our agriculture as exemplified by a number of programmes and initiatives
being implemented in the country. The Agriculture Sector Development
Programme (ASDP), Kilimo Kwanza and
SAGCOT are among such initiatives being undertaken. Noticeable progress is
being registered and the future of Tanzania’s agriculture looks promising.
Overall, in our quest to promote growth,
development and eradicate poverty comprehensively and in
focused manner the Tanzania Development Vision
2025 (TDV 2025) was conceived in the late 1990s and unveiled in the year 2000. The
Vision, envisages to transform Tanzania from a least developed country in the
year 2000 to a middle income country by the year 2025. Tanzania will then be a
country characterized by high quality livelihoods, peace, stability, unity and
good governance; a well-educated and learning society; and a competitive
semi-industrialized economy capable of producing growth and shared benefits.
Ladies and Gentlemen;
After coming
into office in December 2005, I undertook to implement the Vision in earnest.
The first thing we did was an evaluation of the implementation status of the
vision and then plan for its implementation for the remaining period.
Subsequently we developed long term perspective plan for the remaining 15 years
of the Vision. We decided to divide it
in three medium term development plans of five years each.
We are
implementing the first Five Year Development Plan (FYDP 2011/12 – 2015/16), whose
overarching objective has been implementing measures that are geared at unleashing
the growth potentials of Tanzania. Specifically, we are aiming at addressing
infrastructural bottlenecks particularly in energy, ports, roads and railways;
increasing the pool of skilled labor; advancing science, technology and
innovation as well as information and communication technology (ICT); improve
the general business environment and enhance
productivity in agriculture.
In the second
Five Year Development Plan (FYDP
2016/17 – 2020/21) we will focus on nurturing an industrial economy through the
development of a vibrant industrial sector. The focus will be on natural gas
based industries, agro-processing industries and medium technologies
industries. We shall aim at creating jobs by promoting industrial sub-sectors
with high potentials for employment creation.
Ladies and Gentlemen;
In the third Five Year
Development Plan (FYDP 2021/22 – 2025/26) our focus will be on realizing
competitiveness of Tanzania in the regional and the world market place. We will focus on improving competitiveness in
all sectors, especially manufacturing and services so as to ensure that
manufactured products from our economy are successfully exported. The target of
this plan is to transform Tanzania into a manufacturing hub in the region whilst
making sure that all the gains made in social services, the business
environment, infrastructure development and productivity are consolidated and
advanced.
Ladies and Gentlemen;
Apart
from high focus on transforming and modernizing agriculture during the
implementation of the first Five Year Development Plan, we have accorded high
priority to infrastructure development,
particularly the transport subsector such as roads, railways, ports, airports
and marine transport. The reason for
doing this was to deal with one critical constraint to growth and development
in the country. It will be easier to
facilitate access to inputs and markets, reduce transportation costs and costs
of doing business. Significant progress has been made in this regard with roads
where 6,500 kilometers are already paved
and 11,174 kilometers are under
construction. Our objective is to connect
all regions in the country with paved roads is being realized. Also, we have
been investing heavily in improving rural roads such that over 80 percent are now passable throughout
the year.
With
regard to electricity priority is on increasing
energy generation and distribution.
The aim is to catalyze economic activities and improve living standards
of our people since energy is key to development and decent life. We intend to
increase electricity generation from the current 1,478MW to 2,780MW by
2015. Correspondingly, we are expanding electricity distribution and in doing
so, the percentage of households and businesses with access to electricity has
increased from 10 percent in 2005 to
36 percent currently.
Ladies and Gentlemen;
In
an effort to transform our country’s economy from
that of being an exporter of primary products to one that exports value added
products. We aim to export more manufactured, processed or semi processed goods
from our agricultural products, minerals and
other natural resources of which Tanzania is richly endowed. Therefore, we are
giving special attention to industrialization.
Value addition through industrialization will stimulate more production in raw
material source sectors. Also, it will help create jobs and increase employment
and incomes thus lifting more people out of poverty.
Ladies and Gentlemen;
To ensure employability of Tanzanians particularly our young people,
we have, as a matter of priority, expanded education opportunities at all
levels from primary, secondary, vocational to university level. We have more
young boys and girls in primary and secondary schools and young men and women
in universities than any other time in history. We have increased training and
skills development opportunities at various specialized and vocational schools.
We have decided to do so because we know the power of education in moving
communities out of poverty. It is a game changer.
We have, also, increased investment in health care development which
is an important factor in human capital development. It is beginning to pay dividends as evidenced by
improved human development situation in the country. More
and more Tanzanians have access to health and almost all the major killer
diseases are on the decline. Life expectancy has increased from 51 years
in 2002 to 61 years in 2012. Due to improvement of health system, our country
has also recorded significant gains in child survival rates as measured by
reduction of infant and under five mortality rates. Infant Mortality Rate has
declined from 115 per 1,000 live
births in 1988 to 21 per 1,000 live
births over the in 2013. On the other
hand, Under Five Mortality rates have improved from 231 per 1,000 live births 1988 to 54 per 1,000 live births in 2013.
Definitely, these are significant gains in human development.
With
regard to education, after succeeding in increasing access to education at all
levels our preoccupation now is on improving the quality of education. Here,
also, we have been making significant progress on availability of teachers,
text books and other teaching aids. However,
we need to do more on teachers housing and science laboratories.
Ladies and Gentlemen;
In our efforts to promote growth and
eradicate poverty our experience has taught us a few important lessons which I
want to share with you. First, with
the right policy mix, appropriate intervention from government and enhanced
private sector participation, transformation of the economy is possible. Second, we can win the battle of
eradicating income poverty and hunger if we invest in growth enhancing, job
creating and poverty reducing interventions. Our efforts in that direction have
led to reduction of income poverty by 7.8
percentage points from 36 percent
in 2005 to 28.2 percent in 2012 and
attainment of MDG target of reducing food poverty by 50 percent. Third, support
to vulnerable people or households, through conditional cash transfer or
provision of public services, is important if growth and poverty reduction
efforts are to be more inclusive.
Distinguished
participants;
Invited Guests;
Ladies and Gentlemen;
In
conclusion, let me repeat my opening statement that the
world is still faced with a daunting task of eliminating extreme poverty and
that this task is even more daunting in Africa and LDCs like Tanzania.
Political stability and promotion of inclusive and pro-poor economic growth are
pre-requisites to poverty eradication. The growth
decade in Africa and indeed Tanzania has taught us the lesson that economic
growth, while fundamental, is not sufficient.
Growth ought to be quality growth
for it to be sufficient; meaning it has to be inclusive, create employment and
increase people’s incomes.
For
this to happen, such growth must take place in pro-poor sectors that ensure
inclusivity and accessibility to the growth process by the poor and the
marginalized sections of the society. We are encouraged by the World Bank
assurance that extreme poverty as measured by spending less than US$ 1.25 a day can be reduced to no more
than 3 percent by 2030 by fostering
income growth of the bottom 40 percent
of the population in every country. We all look with great anticipation to that
glorious year, when almost all our people will be living in a prosperous world
and living a prosperous life.
It would be remiss of me if I concluded my
remarks without acknowledging and thanking the Government and people of the USA
for the invaluable support they are extending to developing countries like
Tanzania in our endeavours to wrestle our people from object poverty to
prosperity. The support is making the
difference we all desire. Please continue to do good job.
Thanks for your attention.
No comments:
Post a Comment