History - Tanzania - page 593

AID DARLING TO DELINQUENT
Post- Arusha Declaration Tanzania was the darling of the aid donor community. It was the
largest recipient of foreign aid in sub-Saharan Africa throughout the 1970s and was the test-
ing ground for every new-fangled development theory that came along.
Tanzania is ranked 41st worldwide, well ahead of all of its East African
neighbours, in press freedom by Reporters Without Borders
( www.rsf.org ) .
As the economy spiralled downward in the late 1970s and early '80s, the World Bank,
International Monetary Fund (IMF) and a growing chorus of exasperated aid donors called
for stringent economic reform - a dramatic structural adjustment of the economic system.
Overlooking their own failing projects, they pointed to a bloated civil service and moribund
productive sector, preaching that both needed to be exposed to the fresh, cleansing breezes
of the open market. Nyerere resisted the IMF cure. As economic conditions continued to de-
teriorate, dissension grew within government ranks. In 1985, Nyerere resigned. In 1986, the
Tanzanian government submitted to the IMF terms. The grand Tanzanian experiment with
African socialism was over.
Structural Adjustment
As elsewhere on the continent, structural adjustment was a shock treatment that left the na-
tion gasping for air. The civil service was slashed by over a third. Some of the deadwood was
gone, but so were thousands of teachers, healthcare workers and the money for textbooks
and chalk and teacher training. 'For sale' signs were hung on inefficient government-owned
enterprises as well as vital public services such as the Tanzania Railways Corporation. Tar-
iffs put up to protect local producers from cheap imports were flattened in accordance with
the free trade dictates of the World Bank. The lead on national development policy passed
from the Tanzanian government to the donors, with long lists of conditions attached to aid.
The long-term impact of structural adjustment on Tanzania is still hotly debated. Critics
argue that many of Tanzania's ills were due to external factors - the lasting legacy of colo-
nialism, sky-rocketing oil prices in the 1970s and an unfair global economic system. They
charge that the IMF's one-size-fits-all approach to economic reform devastated the national
economy and social services. Advocates of structural adjustment argue that without these
drastic measures, Tanzania would have been even worse off. They put the blame for Tan-
zania's economic decay on flawed domestic policies.
The East African Community - originally formed in 1967 by Tanzania,
Kenya and Uganda and later revived after its 1977 collapse - now also in-