Last month, researchers from AidData and our partner REPOA launched a joint report, Investing in Tanzania's People | Kuwekeza kwa Watu wa Tanzania, at an event in Tanzania. The half-day long convening, held in-person in Dar es Salaam on June 18th, brought together over 50 policymakers, development practitioners, academics, private sector and civil society actors, media professionals, and representatives from the U.S. Embassy in Dar es Salaam and the Government of Tanzania for a presentation of the study’s key themes and findings and a panel discussion on the implications for the Tanzania-U.S. partnership moving forward.
Tanzania, a country of 69 million in East Africa that graduated to lower-middle income status in 2020, has set ambitious goals in its Development Vision 2025 plan. Tanzania’s growth is now outpacing that of its neighbors, and it is expected to become the region’s largest economy in the next decade, according to the IMF and the African Development Bank. The country has made progress on some of its goals; in a major milestone for rural development, the government recently announced that it had electrified 98% of all villages across the country. Others have been hampered by economic headwinds created by Covid-19, with Tanzania projected to fall short on its per capita income target.
Tanzania and the U.S. have partnered on dozens of economic and development initiatives across multiple sectors since the former’s independence. (An announcement made at the event exemplified the kind of partnership activities the U.S. and Tanzania have historically undertaken: speaking on behalf of the U.S. Ambassador to Tanzania, Public Diplomacy Officers Jeanne Clark and Rehema Kalinga delivered opening remarks and announced a new U.S.-Tanzania Tech Challenge for grants of up to $250,000 to fund innovative, tech-based solutions to increase civic engagement and media literacy.)
Yet, little information has been readily available to assess the value of this partnership, both in terms of the resources it mobilizes and the outcomes it produces. The AidData-REPOA study is the first effort to provide a holistic, whole-of-society perspective on U.S. contributions to Tanzania’s development. REPOA, AidData’s in-country partner, is a leading Tanzanian think tank that engages in policy research and dialogues to promote socio-economic transformation for inclusive growth.
The report not only tracks direct U.S. government assistance but also quantifies the value of indirect benefits from trade and other channels, including FDI, philanthropic contributions, tourism revenues, and remittances. AidData and REPOA found that the U.S. relationship with Tanzania delivered an estimated $2.8 billion per year in tangible benefits from 2012 to 2022, with significant U.S. government assistance in agriculture ($546 million), infrastructure ($579 million), and health, particularly around HIV/AIDS ($3.8 billion) and malaria ($533 million).
These insights and others were shared and discussed at the event, which was recorded and made available online. The event kicked off with REPOA's Executive Director, Dr. Donald Mmari, welcoming the participants and providing a high-level overview of the research efforts to date. “There’s been a long history of U.S.-Tanzania partnerships in different areas, such as agriculture, governance, research, and education—many areas in which the United States and Tanzania have cooperated on diplomacy, defense, private investments, trade, and others,” said Dr. Mmari. Reflecting on the report, he noted how “We have seen how the United States, its government, and other stakeholders have contributed to Tanzania in three areas: economic competitiveness and productivity, quality of life and livelihoods, and sustainable and democratic society.”
AidData Senior Policy Specialists Bryan Burgess and Divya Mathew, who co-authored the report, were in attendance and also delivered remarks. Mathew and Dr. Lucas Katera, REPOA’s Director of Collaborations & Capacity Building and a fellow co-author, presented findings from the report, followed by a round of Q&A on the report’s data, research questions, and methodologies that Dr. Katera, Mathew, and Burgess fielded.
Following the presentation portion of the event was a panel discussion moderated by Ahmed Ndyeshobola, a Senior Research Fellow at REPOA. The panelists included David Nyange, Associate Professor at Michigan State University and Chief of Party for Feed the Future SERA BORA project; Godfrey Mondi, Senior Policy Analyst for Trade, Investment and Economic Diplomacy at the Tanzania Private Sector Foundation (TPSF); Mwemezi Makumba, Head of the Department of Research, Innovation and Policy Analysis at HakiElimu; and Dr. Rehema Kilonzo, Director of Internationalization, Convocation, and Continuing Education at the University of Dodoma. Panelists came from the agriculture sector, private sector, civil society, and academia, respectively, and spoke from professional experience on outcomes from the U.S.-Tanzania partnership in each of their fields.
“One of the first big projects of the partnership between the American and Tanzanian people was the establishment of the Morogoro Agricultural College, which later became the Sokoine University of Agriculture; another was the TanZam Highway [which connects Dar Es Salaam in Tanzania to Lusaka in Zambia]. These were big projects in the sixties that were supported by the American people,” explained Dr. Nyange. Early American investments into agricultural research and education and the agricultural sector at large were particularly important, he noted, as the sector employed the vast majority of the population.
Although Tanzanian manufacturing and industry are growing, agriculture still accounts for one-third of Tanzania’s GDP and two-thirds of its jobs. Notably, the AidData-REPOA report finds that while nearly 100% of U.S. agricultural aid to Tanzania in the early 2000s was in the form of emergency food relief, less than 5% is now focused on short-term food aid; instead, the vast majority is funding longer-term investments in resilient food systems to strengthen agricultural value chains and yields.
Benefits have also accrued in the areas of trade, remittances, and educational exchange. “More than a thousand Tanzanians received different scholarships to go study in the U.S. annually in the last decade,” Dr. Kilonzo shared. “Personnel who got training come back to the country to teach or work in academia, in research, in government, and civil society institutions, which is bringing development into Tanzania and that is having an impact,” she said.
During the following Q&A, participants shared their own insights and perspectives about the value and challenges of the U.S.-Tanzania partnership and raised important questions about what policymakers should seek to prioritize in the future. Dr. Jane Mpapalika, a Senior Researcher at REPOA, and AidData’s Bryan Burgess then concluded the day’s events with closing remarks. In a post-event evaluation survey, 84% of participants agreed or strongly agreed that they knew more about the U.S.-Tanzania partnership as a result, and 82% said that they planned to directly use the research and underlying dataset in their work.
