Mr Xi |
Xi Jinping, the new Chinese President, is expected to jet into Dar es
Salaam on Sunday on a visit that has great significance for Sino-Tanzania
relations.
Tanzanian leaders will want to ride on the back of the visit to chart a
new direction in the friendship that ensures that both countries benefit
equally from the relationship, according to local international relations and
political science experts who spoke with The Citizen this week.
Tanzania is rich in minerals, timber and natural gas and there are
indications that oil could be discovered in the near future--all of which China
would need for its industries.
Tanzania could, in turn, benefit from development finance that is
crucial in building infrastructure and agro-processing industries, especially
in view of the fact that Chinese aid tends to have lesser conditionalities than
that from the West.
Mr Xi’s visit to Tanzania and two other African nations has been
described as “a trip of friendship and inheritance” that is expected to broaden
cooperation and map out future prospects, according to Chinese analysts. But
the Kikwete government has been advised to push harder if it is to accrue more
benefits for Tanzania.
“Since the China-Africa Cooperation Forum was founded in 2000, the
content of cooperation between China and Africa is increasingly expanding,” the
state-owned Xinhua news agency said in a report yesterday.
Mr Xi’s visit to Tanzania, South Africa and the Congo Republic is
expected to accelerate his country’s cooperation with Africa and push forward
implementation of the agreements between China and African nations.”
But Dr Benson Bana, head of the department of Political Science and
Public Administration at the University of Dar es Salaam, said: “Our President
should find a way of telling his counterpart what Tanzanians want from China.
They should invest more in this country, rather than making us a ready market
for their products.”
China’s industries need raw materials and markets and this is what the
new leader must strive to provide, analysts say, but not at the expense of
Tanzania--which needs those products, but not when quality is not guaranteed.
Moreover, they should help Tanzania construct its own industries to
produce finished goods,” according to Dr Bana.
The former director of the Tanzania-Mozambique Centre for Foreign
Relations, Professor Abdallah Safari, also wants Tanzania to state its case
clearly because whatever China is looking for will have been crafted in its own
interests.
“These are key issues to crosscheck: They (Chinese) are looking for
resources to feed their industries, which Tanzania can provide,” Prof Safari
noted. “But what does Tanzania get in return?”
While China has helped Tanzania develop its infrastructure and offered
more technical support than any other foreign nation, the general feeling is
that there is room for more. “The new Chinese leadership could be looking for
ways to revitalise the old friendship,” says the professor. “It is only that
they should be restricted from hawking here. They should invest in other
areas.”
Dr Bana wants directives that will lead to the Chinese initiating
projects such as large scale agriculture and industries.
Mr Bashiru Ally, also of the University of Dar es Salaam, is calling
for a new approach to Sino-Tanzania relations, given that they are currently
based on resources. “It is a one-way relationship.” says Mr Ally, “That means
giving more while receiving less, All they are doing is define their intentions
towards our resources.The ideal situation would be for the relationship to
change to an equal profits one.”
Mr Ally spoke of an economic shift of power which is now moving from
the Atlantic Ocean side to Indian Ocean side, adding: “The countries on this
side include China, which gives that country a hard time finding where it can
get raw materials and also a standby market for its products.”
The 1,800-kilometre Tazara railway, built in the 1970s, is the greatest
monument yet to Tanzania-China relations.
The project was made possible by the fact that the ideologies of
Mwalimu Julius Nyerere and China’s revolutionary leader, Chairman Mao Zedong,
dovetailed. One of the factors that made the rail line urgent was that
newly-independent Zambia had a hard time transporting exports and imports via
the Indian Ocean through Zimbabwe, which was still under colonial rule.
Source: The Citizen, www.thecitizen.co.tz, reported by Alex Bitekeye in Dar es Salaam
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