Samia Suluhu Hassan - The African Mirror

Jun

2021

Tanzania considers reviving $10 billion port project

PRESIDENT Samia Suluhu Hassan has announced that Tanzania will look to revive a $10 billion stalled port project on the eastern coast of the country. Tanzania inked a framework agreement in 2013 with China Merchants Holdings International to construct the port and a special economic zone that aimed to transform the east African country into a trade and transport hub to rival its neighbours. The government of the late president John Magufuli, whom Hassan succeeded after he died in March, had complained that the conditions proposed by the investors, which included Oman's State General Reserve Fund, were commercially unviable. China…

Jun

2021

By The African Mirror

Tanzania’s president warns of third wave

COVID-19

TANZANIA’S President Samia Suluhu Hassan has urged the public not to ignore a third wave of COVID-19, after her predecessor, the late John Magufuli, alarmed the world with his sceptical approach to the pandemic. Since Hassan took office after the death of Magufuli in March, the government has changed tack from downplaying the crisis to calling for social distancing and emphasising mask-wearing in public. There is currently no COVID-19 vaccination programme in Tanzania, but the country has applied to join COVAX vaccine-sharing facility and officials there are working with health partners to develop a deployment plan, the World Health Organization…

Jun

2021

By The African Mirror

Embassies in Tanzania can import vaccines

COVID-19

TANZANIA has announced that embassies and international agencies can import COVID-19 vaccines to inoculate their citizens and staff against the coronavirus. The move is part of a more proactive approach to tackling the disease following the death in March of President John Magufuli, who underplayed the pandemic and expressed scepticism of vaccines. The announcement came after experts presented President Samia Suluhu Hassan with a plan, including the issuing of vaccines in the country. "President Samia (Suluhu Hassan) said embassies and international organisations have been permitted to import COVID-19 vaccines to inoculate their own nationals and staff to meet their countries…

May

2021

By The African Mirror

Tanzanian president’s COVID-19 u-turn

COVID-19

TANZANIA’S new president, Samia Suluhu Hassan, has stressed the importance of face masks in fighting COVID-19, ditching one of the most controversial policies of her late coronavirus-sceptic predecessor. Hassan took office in March after the death of John Magufuli, who had urged Tanzanians to shun masks and denounced vaccines as a Western conspiracy, to the frustration of the World Health Organization. Last month, she formed a committee to research whether Tanzania, which under Magufuli stopped reporting coronavirus data, should follow the course that the rest of the world has taken against the pandemic. Wearing a face mask and flanked by…

May

2021

By The African Mirror

Tanzania, once sceptical of COVID-19, announces measures to curb new variants

COVID-19

TANZANIA yesterday announced new anti-coronavirus measures, saying it wanted to prevent the importation of new variants, highlighting new President Samia Suluhu Hassan's more active efforts to contain the pandemic. Among the new measures, travellers, both foreigners and Tanzanians, will be required to present negative COVID-19 tests at border points. Her approach to tackling COVID-19 contrasts sharply with her late predecessor John Magufuli who dismissed fears of the infection and promoted remedies such as steam inhalation and herbal concoctions as a cure. "Based on the global epidemiological situation and emergence of new variants of viruses that cause COVID-19, there's an increased…

May

2021

By The African Mirror

Tanzania installs oxygen production plants

COVID-19

TANZANIA has installed medical oxygen production plants in its biggest national hospitals to serve intensive care wards treating coronavirus patients, its health ministry said yesterday. The ministry statement said the plants installed in each hospital will produce 200 medical oxygen cylinders a day. The announcement that the plants had been installed in seven referral hospitals in a World Bank-backed project was another change of COVID-19 policies since the death of President John Magufuli in March. Earlier this month, President Samia Suluhu Hassan shifted the country's approach to COVID-19 from the controversial stances of her predecessor by announcing she was forming…

Apr

2021

By The African Mirror

Tanzania goes back on decision to lift media ban

NEWS

TANZANIA has revised a decision to lift a ban on all media in the country, clarifying that only online television would benefit from the measure, a government spokesman said in a tweet. The country's new President Samia Suluhu Hassan said on Tuesday that media banned under her late predecessor John Magufuli should be allowed to operate. Following on from an announcement that the government was forming a committee to research COVID-19, Tuesday's announcement appeared to indicate a change in course for the nation after Magufuli's death last month. Yet a day later, the decision, welcomed by local and international press…

Apr

2021

By The African Mirror

Tanzania’s president reviews COVID-19 stance, lifts media ban

NEWS

TANZANIA’S new president Samia Suluhu Hassan yesterday drew a line under her predecessor's controversial stances on COVID-19 and the media, indicating an apparent change in course for the nation after the death of John Magufuli last month. Hassan announced she was forming a committee to research whether Tanzania should follow the course taken by the rest of the world against the pandemic. "We cannot segregate ourselves like an island, but also we cannot blindly accept what is being brought forward to us (on COVID-19) without carrying out our own investigations and inputs," she told officials at State House in the…

Apr

2021

By The African Mirror

Tanzania’s Samia Hassan has the chance to heal a polarised nation

THOUGHT LEADERSHIP

SAMIA Suluhu Hassan becomes the first female president in Tanzania taking over from President John Magufuli who died on 17 March 2021. NICODEMUS MINDE, PhD Fellow, United States International University Born in 1960, she hails from Makunduchi, an old town on Unguja island, in Zanzibar. Her father was a teacher and her mother a housewife. After graduating from high school she studied public administration and later obtained a Masters in community economic development. She began her political career in 2000 when she was elected as a special seat member in the Zanzibar House of Representatives. Special seats are reserved for…

Mar

2021

By The African Mirror

Tanzania’s new president faces a tough ‘to do’ list

THOUGHT LEADERSHIP

A major political transition is underway in Tanzania after the laying to rest of former president John Pombe Magufuli. The East African nation’s new leader Samia Suluhu Hassan is the country’s sixth president and currently the only woman running a country on the continent. We asked Rob Ahearne, who has been doing research in Tanzania for more than a decade, to set out the political context and Hassan’s immediate challenges. ROB AHEARNE, Senior Lecturer in Politics and International Relations, University of East London What political environment has the new president stepped into? Magufuli’s anti-corruption agenda, emphasis on hard work, fractious…