President Kikwete in a souvenir photo with the US Secretary of State Mr John Kerry and the USAID Administrator Dr Rajiv Shah before the start of the USAID Frontiers in Development Forum: Ending Extreme poverty at the Reagan Building in Washington DC.
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KEYNOTE SPEECH BY DR. JAKAYA MRISHO KIKWETE, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED REPUBLIC OF TANZANIA, DURING THE USAID FORUM ON “FRONTIERS IN DEVELOPMENT: ENDING EXTREME POVERTY”, 19TH SEPTEMBER, 2014, WASHINGTON, D.C
Honourable Dr. Rajiv Shah, USAID Administrator;
Honourable Mr. Mark Diop, Vice President of the World Bank;
Distinguished Participants;
Ladies and Gentlemen;
Allow me to begin by thanking you Dr. Rajiv Shah for inviting me to participate in this Forum and for affording me the opportunity to share my thoughts on its very important theme of Ending Extreme Poverty. I commend the USAID for initiating this debate, and I hope participants will come up with pertinent proposals about ways and means to end this human degrading condition of our time. For those of us who live with this reality in our countries, it is heartwarming, indeed, to see that there are friends out here who care about the plight of the poorest and are ready to do what it takes to erase this scourge from the face of this planet.
Distinguished Participants;
Ladies and Gentlemen;
The World Bank Report on End Extreme Poverty and Promote Shared Growth (2013) tells us that globally poverty has declined rapidly over the past three decades since 1990. In this regard, some 700 million people have moved above the US$ 1.25 poverty line but about 1.2 billion still live under conditions of extreme poverty. Out of the 1.2 billion people, more than 750 million live on less than US$ 1.0 a day and nearly 150 million others live on less than US$ 0.50 a day. Similarly, around 800 million are faced with hunger or have inadequate food supply and, 500 million of them, suffer from chronic malnutrition.
Ladies and Gentlemen;
It is good to note that the world has been able to achieve the Millennium Development Goal No.1 of reducing by half the number of people who live under extreme poverty. Indeed, poverty rate in developing countries has been reduced from 43.1 percent in 1990 to 20.6 percent by 2010. This achievement shows that it is possible to eradicate poverty in the world. However, this achievement has not been uniform across the developing world. China and India accounted for most of the success and nearly half of the poor live in 20 countries in South Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa and East Asia and the Pacific.
Ladies and Gentlemen;
The challenge of overcoming extreme poverty is an overwhelming one in Africa. Africa is home to 33 of the 48 world’s least developed countries (LDCs). Moreover, in 2010 more than one-third of Sub-Saharan African countries had an extreme poverty rate of more than 50 percent. Among them, 12 countries had an extreme poverty rate of above 60 percent and 4 countries that are fragile and affected by conflicts were above 80 percent. This condition has not changed much today as we speak.
Ladies and Gentlemen;
Clearly, political stability is an important factor in the fight against extreme poverty. Conflicts worsen the poverty situation. Conflicts disrupt economic activities, scare away investments and cause destruction of property including productive assets as well as social and economic infrastructure. Unfortunately, Africa has had an unfair share of conflicts. Very few African countries have enjoyed uninterrupted peace in the five decades of Africas independence from colonial rule. Of the 33 least developed countries from Africa 25 have gone through some form of conflict. Even the non LDCs in Africa have not been spared. Consequently, lack of peace and stability has been a critical factor in Africa’s slow pace towards poverty reduction.
Paradoxically, even those countries which have had no conflicts have not done very well either. The pace of poverty reduction has been muted. In my view, this is very much a function of the economic policies pursued, in the first two and half, decades since independence. They caused stagnation of economic growth and some economies actually shrank thus aggravating the poverty situation among the people. The turnaround began in the second half of the 1990s after the economic reforms introduced in the mid 1980s began to take effect. The extent of the turnaround depended on the success of the reforms. Likewise, the extent of poverty reduction depended on the success of the reform agenda and the level of poverty the country was in at the beginning of the reforms. It also depended on external environment in particular the global economic architecture which has not been so kind to poor nations and poor people in the developing world.
Ladies and Gentlemen;
My dear country Tanzania is a typical example of a country that enjoyed uninterrupted peace and stability since independence yet we are one of the LDCs from 1971 when LDCs classification started. Besides a hostile global environment, economic policies pursued soon after independence which did not succeed has a big hand in this state of affairs. As a matter of fact, the economy declined to dangerous lows. Things began to change after the introduction of economic reforms from the 1980s. We have stayed the cause of reforms ever since with remarkable success. The country is now enjoying strong macro-economic performance with the last decade being exceptionally successful.
Overall economic growth has increase from an average of 3.5 percent in the 1990s to the average of about 7 percent over the last decade. Despite this growth, poverty reduction has not been correspondingly impressive. In the last two decades income poverty declined from 39 percent in 1990 to 28.2 percent in 2012, a decline of about 11 percent only. This explains why we will not be able to meet the MDG target of halving extreme poverty below the 1990 baseline by 2015. However, we have been successful with regard to reducing by a half the proportion of population living below the national food poverty line. This declined from 21.6 percent in 1990 to 9.7 percent in 2012, a decline of about 12 percent.
Distinguished Participants;
Ladies and Gentlemen;
Our income poverty reduction efforts have not borne the expected results mainly because our growth has not been high enough in sectors that support the majority of the people, especially the poor. The fast growing sectors and their ten-year average growth rates (2004 – 2013) were the following: (1) Services (8.0%) driven by Telecommunication (20.2%), Financial Services (10.8%) and Trade (8.2%); (2) Industry (8.5%) comprising of Construction (9.6%), Manufacturing (8.6%) and Mining (8.2%). Unfortunately, agriculture, which supports about 75 percent of our population in terms of employment and livelihood, grew at an average of only 4.2 percent in the last decade.
Ladies and Gentlemen;
The low growth in agriculture explains why the pace of poverty reduction has not been fast enough as expected. We have been taking action to transform and modernize our agriculture as exemplified by a number of programmes and initiatives being implemented in the country. The Agriculture Sector Development Programme (ASDP), Kilimo Kwanza and SAGCOT are among such initiatives being undertaken. Noticeable progress is being registered and the future of Tanzania’s agriculture looks promising.
Overall, in our quest to promote growth, development and eradicate poverty comprehensively and in focused manner the Tanzania Development Vision 2025 (TDV 2025) was conceived in the late 1990s and unveiled in the year 2000. The Vision, envisages totransform Tanzania from a least developed country in the year 2000 to a middle income country by the year 2025. Tanzania will then be a country characterized by high quality livelihoods, peace, stability, unity and good governance; a well-educated and learning society; and a competitive semi-industrialized economy capable of producing growth and shared benefits.
Ladies and Gentlemen;
After coming into office in December 2005, I undertook to implement the Vision in earnest. The first thing we did was an evaluation of the implementation status of the vision and then plan for its implementation for the remaining period. Subsequently we developed long term perspective plan for the remaining 15 years of the Vision. We decided to divide it in three medium term development plans of five years each.
We are implementing the first Five Year Development Plan (FYDP 2011/12 – 2015/16), whose overarching objective has been implementing measures that are geared at unleashing the growth potentials of Tanzania. Specifically, we are aiming at addressing infrastructural bottlenecks particularly in energy, ports, roads and railways; increasing the pool of skilled labor; advancing science, technology and innovation as well as information and communication technology (ICT); improve the general business environment and enhance productivity in agriculture.
In the second Five Year Development Plan (FYDP 2016/17 – 2020/21) we will focus on nurturing an industrial economy through the development of a vibrant industrial sector. The focus will be on natural gas based industries, agro-processing industries and medium technologies industries. We shall aim at creating jobs by promoting industrial sub-sectors with high potentials for employment creation.
Ladies and Gentlemen;
In the third Five Year Development Plan (FYDP 2021/22 – 2025/26) our focus will be on realizing competitiveness of Tanzania in the regional and the world market place. We will focus on improving competitiveness in all sectors, especially manufacturing and services so as to ensure that manufactured products from our economy are successfully exported. The target of this plan is to transform Tanzania into a manufacturing hub in the region whilst making sure that all the gains made in social services, the business environment, infrastructure development and productivity are consolidated and advanced.
Ladies and Gentlemen;
Apart from high focus on transforming and modernizing agriculture during the implementation of the first Five Year Development Plan, we have accorded high priority to infrastructure development, particularly the transport subsector such as roads, railways, ports, airports and marine transport. The reason for doing this was to deal with one critical constraint to growth and development in the country. It will be easier to facilitate access to inputs and markets, reduce transportation costs and costs of doing business. Significant progress has been made in this regard with roads where 6,500 kilometers are already paved and 11,174 kilometers are under construction. Our objective is to connect all regions in the country with paved roads is being realized. Also, we have been investing heavily in improving rural roads such that over 80 percent are now passable throughout the year.
With regard to electricity priority is on increasing energy generation and distribution. The aim is to catalyze economic activities and improve living standards of our people since energy is key to development and decent life. We intend to increase electricity generation from the current 1,478MW to 2,780MW by 2015. Correspondingly, we are expanding electricity distribution and in doing so, the percentage of households and businesses with access to electricity has increased from 10 percent in 2005 to 36 percent currently.
Ladies and Gentlemen;
In an effort to transform our country’s economy from that of being an exporter of primary products to one that exports value added products. We aim to export more manufactured, processed or semi processed goods from our agricultural products, minerals and other natural resources of which Tanzania is richly endowed. Therefore, we are giving special attention to industrialization. Value addition through industrialization will stimulate more production in raw material source sectors. Also, it will help create jobs and increase employment and incomes thus lifting more people out of poverty.
Ladies and Gentlemen;
To ensure employability of Tanzanians particularly our young people, we have, as a matter of priority, expanded education opportunities at all levels from primary, secondary, vocational to university level. We have more young boys and girls in primary and secondary schools and young men and women in universities than any other time in history. We have increased training and skills development opportunities at various specialized and vocational schools. We have decided to do so because we know the power of education in moving communities out of poverty. It is a game changer.
We have, also, increased investment in health care development which is an important factor in human capital development. It is beginning to pay dividends as evidenced by improved human development situation in the country. More and more Tanzanians have access to health and almost all the major killer diseases are on the decline. Life expectancy has increased from 51 years in 2002 to 61 years in 2012. Due to improvement of health system, our country has also recorded significant gains in child survival rates as measured by reduction of infant and under five mortality rates. Infant Mortality Rate has declined from 115 per 1,000 live births in 1988 to 21 per 1,000 live births over the in 2013. On the other hand, Under Five Mortality rates have improved from 231 per 1,000 live births 1988 to 54 per 1,000 live births in 2013. Definitely, these are significant gains in human development.
With regard to education, after succeeding in increasing access to education at all levels our preoccupation now is on improving the quality of education. Here, also, we have been making significant progress on availability of teachers, text books and other teaching aids. However, we need to do more on teachers housing and science laboratories.
Ladies and Gentlemen;
In our efforts to promote growth and eradicate poverty our experience has taught us a few important lessons which I want to share with you. First, with the right policy mix, appropriate intervention from government and enhanced private sector participation, transformation of the economy is possible. Second, we can win the battle of eradicating income poverty and hunger if we invest in growth enhancing, job creating and poverty reducing interventions. Our efforts in that direction have led to reduction of income poverty by 7.8 percentage points from 36 percent in 2005 to 28.2 percent in 2012 and attainment of MDG target of reducing food poverty by 50 percent. Third, support to vulnerable people or households, through conditional cash transfer or provision of public services, is important if growth and poverty reduction efforts are to be more inclusive.
Distinguished participants;
Invited Guests;
Ladies and Gentlemen;
In conclusion, let me repeat my opening statement that the world is still faced with a daunting task of eliminating extreme poverty and that this task is even more daunting in Africa and LDCs like Tanzania. Political stability and promotion of inclusive and pro-poor economic growth are pre-requisites to poverty eradication. The growth decade in Africa and indeed Tanzania has taught us the lesson that economic growth, while fundamental, is not sufficient. Growth ought to be quality growth for it to be sufficient; meaning it has to be inclusive, create employment and increase people’s incomes.
For this to happen, such growth must take place in pro-poor sectors that ensure inclusivity and accessibility to the growth process by the poor and the marginalized sections of the society. We are encouraged by the World Bank assurance that extreme poverty as measured by spending less than US$ 1.25 a day can be reduced to no more than 3 percent by 2030 by fostering income growth of the bottom 40 percent of the population in every country. We all look with great anticipation to that glorious year, when almost all our people will be living in a prosperous world and living a prosperous life.
It would be remiss of me if I conluded my remarks without acknowledging and thanking the Government and people of the USA for the invaluable support they are extending to developing countries like Tanzania in our endeavours to wrestle our people from object poverty to prosperity. The support is making the difference we all desire. Please continue to do good job.
Thanks for your attention.
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