This is the third volume in Oxford University Press's series Africa: Policies for Prosperity, edited by Oxford University economists Christopher Adam and Paul Collier. Previous volumes have scrutinized contemporary development challenges of Kenya and Zambia; where the editors now turn to Tanzania, Benno Ndulu, governor of the Bank of Tanzania, joins them.
The philosophy guiding this series is to improve common citizens’ and local policymakers’ knowledge about the opportunities and challenges inherent in Africa's recent decades of economic progress. It does so by bringing academic research closer to the affected publics, connecting it with current development debates and limiting the amount of academic jargon in the subsequent texts. The editors aim to help societies hold their governments to account for the implementation of development strategies (p. v). It is, however, uncertain whether the book consistently manages to be accessible to the intended audience of lower-level government employees, social commentators and the wider informed public. While the majority of chapters are primarily descriptive and light on theory, the style does not quite manage to offer a clearly distinguishable alternative to existing policy literature. For the more scholarly, experienced audience, however, the book provides clear and convincingly argued texts and is a welcome in-depth country study that adds to the general debate on challenges and solutions for contemporary African development.
The book is rich in information. It consists of twelve chapters authored by the editors together with twenty-seven additional scholars currently working within both academia and the policy community and representing a variety of organizations, including the University of Dar es Salaam, the World Bank, UNU-WIDER and the Bank of Tanzania. After a brief introduction, the book starts with a chapter summarizing Tanzania's economic experience from independence in 1961 to the present. This is the first in what the editors consider a cluster of chapters concerned with fundamental issues of structural determinants of growth and prosperity. A second cluster of chapters deals with employment, incomes and poverty, and the final cluster is dedicated to the core concerns of the macro-economic agencies. While there is a logical structure to the book, there would have been an added benefit if the editors had provided a concluding chapter in which they synthesized the way in which the different chapters complement one another and had commented on their contributions to the claimed end goal of structural transformation.
Together, the chapters provide a broad and pertinent spread of development challenges covering issues such as natural resource management, urban planning, infrastructure development, human capital formation, monetary policy and financial inclusion. While it is impossible to cover all the relevant issues in one single book, a couple of topics would have warranted additional attention. Despite roughly 65 per cent of Tanzania's population living in rural areas and the majority being involved in agriculture, there is only one chapter addressing the challenges for the agricultural sector. Its focus is on the positive effects of increased urbanization, growing urban demand for agricultural products and the potential of new food value chains. There is, however, need for further targeted policies for rural growth. Another missing topic is the informal economy, which, despite covering the large majority of the labour force, is not addressed explicitly.
Overall, the book primarily pays attention to urban areas and the formal economy, and it is argued that ‘rising prosperity depends on rising productivity and this in turn depends on accumulating the capacity to manage ever more complex production processes’ (p. 5). Such development requires further human capital formation, the building up of effective organizations (firms and bureaucracies), and the development of technologies for connectivity (transport, ICT and rule of law). In the past, we have seen schools of thought emphasizing either top-down or bottom-up processes. This book instead focuses on the meso-level, although its success is dependent on an enabling and development-oriented government enforcing the ‘right’ policies. Since African independence half a century ago, many have offered their advice and convictions, and Tanzania is a country that has had its fair share of social engineering. Have Adam, Collier, Ndulu and their co-authors finally identified the missing silver bullet for development?
In Chapter 2, Ndulu identifies four distinguishable opportunities for future prosperity in Tanzania: sustained peace, favourable geographical location, valuable natural resource endowments, and abundant youthful labour force. It is difficult to disagree with either this conclusion or the subsequent chapters’ policy recommendations to develop infrastructure, avoid the natural resource curse, provide education, ensure fiscal stability, and so on. We have heard such policy recommendations before. The question is if the time has finally come for political will, bureaucratic capacity and private-sector involvement to actually deliver, to achieve sustainable growth and to reach the goal of turning Tanzania into a middle- to high-income economy. This is the hope of the editors.
