Africa-Press – Tanzania. TODAY is Uhuru Day. It is exactly 59 years since this great country won independence from Britain.
Independence and improving the human and economic development had been the dominating agenda for most of African freedom fighters in the 1950s.
For instance, Father of the Nation Mwalimu Julius Nyerere said before 1961 “In forty years to come after independence Tanzania will be able to change into a well-developed nation.”
This statement of intent met a smiling and friendly country full of happy, optimistic people full of hope for the future.
Today as we mark Uhuru Day, the friendliness and the warmth of Tanzanians remain the same 59 years later. Independent Tanzania is the most peaceful nation in the world.
This is a country where presidents always leave office after peaceful elections when their period of office ends. This is a country that has opened its doors to foreign investment and which gives investors many opportunities for repatriating their profits.
The Tanzania that Mwalimu Nyerere predicted would undergo a radical transformation has fully accepted globalisation and, economically, has become part of this global world.
This is the success story of a country on giant leap to prosperity. There have been other quantifiable improvements. Before independence, every fourth child died before the age of 15.
UN figures show that the infant mortality rate (deaths by the age of 5) was 248 children per 1,000 births. Today, it is reported that only 1 in 7 children die, or, in total, 126 of every 1,000 new-born babies.
Indeed, as we commemorate Uhuru Day, this great country has witnessed tremendous progress if we compare with the 75 years of foreign rule.
But, and this is a strong but, we need to ask ourselves pertinent questions as we move to the age of industrialisation: Where did we go wrong and what went right? How could things have been done differently and which problems were?
