Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
cludes Rwanda and Burundi. There has been some progress towards eco-
nomic cooperation, but political federation is still far in the future.
Economic growth rates slipped into the negative around 1974, where they languished
for the next 25 years. In 1967, revenue from Tanzania's exports was sufficient to cover the
costs of its necessary imports (oil, machinery, consumer goods). By 1985, earnings from
exports covered only a third of its import bill. The government was forced to borrow money
to cover the rest, and from the end of the 1970s, Tanzania began to accumulate a crippling
burden of debt from which it has yet to escape. Part of this debt is comprised of loans for
grand but ultimately unsuccessful development projects it was advised to undertake by its
multiplicity of aid donors. In 1997, Tanzania was spending four times as much servicing
its external debt than on healthcare, a situation that has improved only slightly in the past
decade and a half.
Multiparty Democracy
Almost one-third (102) of members of Tanzania's National Assembly
are women, making the country one of a relative handful worldwide that
meet the UN target for female political representation set in 1995.
Part of the structural adjustment aid program was the re-introduction of Western-style mul-
tiparty democracy in 1992. In the December 2005 elections, Jakaya Mrisho Kikwete was
elected president with 80% of the popular vote. Five opposition parties took 43 of 319 seats
in the National Assembly. In the 2010 national elections, Kikwete again won, although with
a considerably smaller majority (62% of the vote) against opposition candidate Willibrod
Slaa of the Party for Democracy and Progress, who garnered 27% of the vote.
TIMELINE
c 25 million BC
Tectonic plates collide and the East African plains buckle. Formation of the
Great Rift Valley begins, as do changes that result ultimately in formation of
Kilimanjaro and other volcanoes.
3.6 million BC
Our earliest ancestors ambled across the plain at Laetoli in northern Tanzania,
leaving their footprints for modern-day archaeologists to find.
10,000- 3000 BC
