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Ensuring Industrialisation in Tanzania Benefits All

16 May 2016

Repoa research workshop image

IKD members and associates Maureen Mackintosh, Dave Wield and Marc Wuyts recently joined fellow associate Paula Tibandebage in Dar Es Salaam for the 21st Annual Research Workshop organised by Tanzania's prime think tank and official OU partner, REPOA.

By promoting research and deepening policy dialogue, Making Industrialisation Work for Socio-Economic Transformation set out to help make achieving the aims of the Tanzania Development Vision (TDV) 2025 more realistic. Key questions included:

  • Does industrialisation entail sidelining agriculture?
  • How can the wealth of natural resources in Tanzania stimulate rapid industrialisation? And how can this, in turn, benefit the majority – especially the poor and vulnerable?

The event was attended by more than 300 figures involved in Tanzania’s industrial policy, including Vice-President Samia Suluhu Hassan and Minister for Industry, Trade and Investment Charles Mwijage, along with many other key policy, NGO and private sector leaders. The high turnout underscores a major commitment from the new government which, in a change from policy over recent decades, has prioritised industrial development for social transformation.

Maureen and Paula’s paper Health as a Productive Sector of the Tanzanian Economy highlighted the current threat to the pharma industry in Tanzania from weak state action. Rather than the 'social sector' it is often characterised as – which leads to its being incorrectly classified as a cost to the economy – their paper argues that health care is a key economic sector, influencing economic development as well as directly influencing human well-being, and policy should treat it as such.

Dave chaired and acted as reporter for two sessions and discussed initial data from a paper he is writing with Roberto Simonetti on Learning to Compete in Tanzanian Industry. While in his paper, The Relevance of Old Ideas for Present-Day Debates in Tanzania, Marc Wuyts argued that effective economic transformation requires that industrialisation go hand in hand with social policy.

Read more about the workshop.

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