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Tanzania: Mission to America

Published date:
Wednesday, 20 September 2006

A high powered Tanzanian business delegation led by President Jakaya Kikwete is in the United States on a historic mission to promote the country’s image internationally, boost trade ties and parade investment opportunities.

“Tanzania is endowed with many resources, including vast arable land, wildlife, beaches and minerals. The country is, however, little known internationally for various reasons including lack of publicity.

“We have now aggressively embarked on the promotional drive. Gone are the days when good things were said to be selling without promotion,” Tanzania Chamber of Commerce, Industry and Agriculture (TCCIA) President Elvis Musiba said in a news conference in Dar es Salaam recently.

President Kikwete was scheduled to arrive in New York from Havana, Cuba, where he attended the 14th Non-Aligned Movement Summit on Sunday, while some other 40 plus delegates were expected in since Friday.

A programme made available to Business Standard shows that President Kikwete was yesterday evening scheduled to officiate as the chief guest at a business dinner organised by Citi Group, one of the largest and successful financial institutions in the world with a branch in Tanzania.

Tanzanian Business Group (TBG) delegation drawn from a broad spectrum of sectors, including manufacturing, tourism, transport and agriculture will be having two weeks of hectic engagements with their counterparts in the United States in groups or one-to-one session.

Apart from New York, the delegation would also visit Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Boston and Houston.

Mr Musiba said the Dar es Salaam Port, airports, tourism facilities and transport services were among hundreds of opportunities that the delegation is going to promote in the United States.

The Dar es Salaam Port is of a very significant importance during the two-week campaign, since Tanzania is a gateway to several land-locked countries in eastern and central Africa.

The countries already being served by the Dar es Salaam Port are Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo, Malawi, Rwanda, Uganda and Zambia.

There are at least six projects that the Tanzania Ports Authority (TPA) intends to execute under its multi-billion shillings investment programmes, according to sources.

Analysts say Tanzania should have started expansion of its ports long ago and take advantage of its geographical location neighbouring several land-locked countries that route their exports and imports through nearer Indian Ocean ports.

Some countries, especially in Asia and the Gulf have made big strides economically by utilising fully their ports. These include Singapore, Malaysia and Hong Kong and Dubai.

For Tanzania to benefit from the ports it would need to invest heavily in facilities and human resources to make it operate efficiently.

In his briefing to journalists, Mr Musiba said at present it takes up to 14 days to clear a container at the Dar es Salaam Port, in places like Dubai, Hong Kong and Singapore that can be done in just two hours. “It is now our challenge to turn Dar es Salaam into the best port on the African continent,” the TCCIA President said.

He pointed out further that increased exposure of Tanzania’s tourist attractions to the US market was another key assignment to the delegation. United States, particularly the State of California could become significant source of tourism of revenue.

The Tanzanian delegation will have a lot to learn from the state of California, which has a vibrant economy, since if it were to be a nation then it could have been one of the world’s 10 richest.

In California agriculture is an important sector, particularly in production of grapes, cotton, flowers, and oranges, as well as dairy products. California’s farms are highly productive as a result of good soil and use of modern agricultural methods, where irrigation is critical.

Much of the state’s industrial production depends on the processing of farm produce and upon such local resources as petroleum, natural gas, lumber, cement, and sand and gravel. Since World War II, however, manufacturing, notably of electronic equipment, computers, machinery, transportation equipment, and metal products, has increased enormously.

But many high-tech companies and small low-tech, often low-wage, companies remain in South California, in what is said to be the largest manufacturing belt in the United States. Farther north, ‘Silicon Valley,’ between Palo Alto and San Jose, so-called because it is the nation’s leading producer of semiconductors, is also a focus of software development.

California continues to be a major US centre for motion-picture, television film, and related entertainment industries, especially in Hollywood.

Los Angeles is also highly reputed in real property industry, which Tanzania aims at promoting. “We are going to learn on development of satellite cities to save our cities from congestion,” Mr Musiba said.

The TCCIA head also said during the visit the delegation would revisit Tanzania-US trade development, including utilisation of the preferential access of the country’s products to the US market under the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA).

Many observers say that Tanzania has so far benefited very little from the scheme compared to many countries in Africa.

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