Outgoing World Bank Country Director Bella Bird advised the government to sustain and invest more in poverty eradication initiatives that impact lives of needy groups for the country is to achieve its various development goals. (IPP MEDIA 15 January 14, 2020)

Comment:

Campaign on poverty eradication is a worldwide slogan, national and internationally mainly in developing countries including Tanzania.

It includes many ways and means being considered as solution to issue of poverty that effects millions in the world.

There are many local, nationally and internationally institutions engaging in the so-called combating poverty in the sense of relieving hardship for poor communities. A wide range of policies has been laid down to undertake national poverty eradication projects.  Tanzania as any other developing nation fully involves itself on the issue of combating poverty as a commitment of the World Social Summit in Copenhagen in 1995.

Tanzania National Poverty Eradication Strategy of 1998 was formulated and poverty eradication issue was incorporated into the long-term vision, Tanzania Development Vision 2025, and the medium-term policy and National Strategy for Growth and Reduction in Poverty (NSGRP).

While in Zanzibar, poverty reduction policies were also incorporated into the Zanzibar Poverty Reduction Plan, Zanzibar Development Vision 2020 and Zanzibar Strategy for Growth and Reduction of Poverty (ZSGRP).

All strategies and projects meant to engage in reduction of income poverty by focusing on growth, sustainable employment generation, create adequate infrastructure for production, food security and access to energy by the majority of the population.

Also, under Agricultural and Livestock Policy targets transformation of the agriculture sector to commercial production, improve living standards and increase access of vulnerable groups including the poor to land and education.

The vital question that arises on the issue of combating poverty is why peoples of these developing nations live below the poverty line while their nations have all necessary resources and potentials to make poverty history?

For instance, Tanzania having a number of poverty eradications strategies and projects as aforementioned, amazingly it is surrounded by the Indian Ocean with a bulk of sea products both for foods and earnings, having a massive reserve of natural gases. It is also host to a number of mines with a huge potential in gold, to the extent of enjoying a third place in gold production in Africa, after Ghana and South Africa.

Regarding agricultural context, it has massive arable land, high human resources nearly 60 million with massive sources of water such as Lake Victoria, which is among the largest lakes in the world covering 65,583 sq mi, where Tanzania alone has a share of 49% of 33,700 square kilometers, the biggest share comparing with neighbouring partners (Uganda and Kenya). Not to mention Lake Tanganyika, the second-largest lake by volume in the world and the deepest lake in Africa that holds the greatest volume of fresh water.

The plain truth to everyone is that the source of poverty in Tanzania, Africa and developing nations generally is because of lacking independence and a clear vision as a result of not having an ideological pillar to guide them accordingly in their affairs. Their partial blind imitation of Western capitalist ideology brings them to nowhere except totally surrendering their nations to the greedy of Western capitalist nations and China, their multinational companies and their exploitative financial institutions, such as the World Bank, IMF, etc. As a result, all resources of developing nations are being exploited by Western capitalist nations via corrupted politicians, where ordinary people suffer in incessant poverty.

Thus, the statement above made by the outgoing World Bank Country Director on poverty eradication is merely a scorn, ridiculing the government and people of Tanzania, since they know for sure that the major source of poverty in developing nations is capitalism.

Tanzania as all developing nations cannot truly eradicate poverty under capitalist initiatives being administered by capitalist polices and their exploitative tools, what is needed to all developing nations in the world is true liberation through ideological change from capitalism to Islam under its Khilafah State (Caliphate).

إِنَّ اللهَ لَا يُغَيِّرُ مَا بِقَوْمٍ حَتَّى يُغَيِّرُوا مَا بِأَنْفُسِهِمْ

“Indeed Allah will not change the conditions of a people, until they change what is in themselves.” [Surat Ar-Ra’d: 11]

 

Masoud Msellem

Media Representative of Hizb ut Tahrir in Tanzania