Tanzania - The African Mirror

Jul

2021

Tanzania arrests leader of main opposition party

TANZANIA’S main opposition party has revealed that its leader had been arrested with ten other party figures, in what it called proof that President Samia Suluhu Hassan was persisting with the authoritarianism of her late predecessor John Magufuli. The Chadema party said leader Freeman Mbowe and the others had been detained before dawn at a hotel in the lakeside city of Mwanza, where they had been planning to hold a meeting later on Wednesday to discuss proposals for a new constitution. The arrests followed the detention of dozens of other party members last week for holding a meeting without permission.…

Jun

2021

By The African Mirror

Tanzania considers reviving $10 billion port project

BUSINESS

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 to offer alternative education for school dropouts including pregnant girls

EDUCATION

SECONDARY school drop-outs in Tanzania will be offered the opportunity to resume studies in alternative colleges, the government has said, part of a shift away from a disputed policy under which pregnant girls were expelled from school. Such expulsions had increased under the tenure of maverick President John Magufuli, who died in March, according to rights groups who accused his government of discriminating against female students based on a policy that dated back to 1961. "We are offering an alternative path to education to all children who missed their education for any reason, including those girls who got pregnant while…

Jun

2021

By The African Mirror

Tanzania seeks IMF loan to address COVID-19 pandemic challenges

BUSINESS

TANZANIA is in talks with the International Monetary Fund to secure a loan to tackle the challenges caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the Fund's resident representative said on Thursday. Tanzania, which has not been publishing data on infections since May last year, will be required to provide that information before the loan is approved, Jens Reinke told Reuters. The East African nation is seeking to borrow its entire entitlement from the IMF, amounting to about $570 million. "COVID data is not some weird prior benchmark. When applying for pandemic-related emergency financing, evidence of the pandemic has to be available to…

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

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

Uganda, Tanzania, oil firms sign accords to build $3.5 bln pipeline

BUSINESS

ELIAS BIRYABAREMA UGANDA, Tanzania and oil firms Total and CNOOC on Sunday signed agreements that will kickstart the construction of a $3.5 billion crude pipeline to help ship crude from fields in western Uganda to international markets. France's Total and China's CNOOC own Uganda's oilfields after Britain's Tullow exited the country last year. The signatories have now agreed to "to start investment in the construction of infrastructure that will produce and transport the crude oil," said Robert Kasande, permanent secretary at Uganda's ministry of energy. Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni and Tanzania's new leader Samia Suluhu Hassan, on her first official…

Apr

2021

By The African Mirror

U.N. warns Tanzania not to reject people fleeing Mozambique violence

NEWS

EMMA RUMNEY and DAVID LEWIS UNITED Nations teams have received "worrying" reports that Tanzania has rejected over 1,000 people seeking refuge from an Islamic State-claimed attack on a town in northern Mozambique, the U.N. refugee agency UNHCR said on Tuesday. The March 24 attack on the town of Palma, adjacent to gas developments worth $60 billion, sent the town's residents scattering in all directions, with some fleeing into dense forest while others escaped by boat. Some headed north towards Tanzania, aid workers said. "UNHCR teams... have received worrying reports from displaced populations that over 1,000 people fleeing Mozambique and trying…

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…