Date : 14 November 2015
At this event several organisations made presentations of their work in supporting development in Tanzania. This is a summary
Date : 14 November 2015
At this event several organisations made presentations of their work in supporting development in Tanzania. This is a summary
Date : 8th November 2015
Venue : The Warehouse, Reading
Sunday 8th November 2015. Thanks to the wonderful support of a small group of local Tanzanians living in Reading, ‘The Warehouse’ venue was transformed from its usual ‘sports hall’ activity into a colourful and celebratory venue with hanging Tanzanian flags and traditional colours, multi coloured balloons on tables and a ‘ top decorated table,’ all reminiscent of a typical Tanzanian celebration where guests are made to feel very special and welcomed, so familiar to those of us who visit Tanzania. The celebrations gathered pace as the afternoon moved on with a small workshop for children and not so young people who enjoyed drums and shakers with well known Tanzanian musician Freddy Macha and his two fellow musicians, Saidi Kanda and Fab Moses, who also entertained everyone during the evening with songs, acrobatic dancing and great musical humour. Just to ensure that everyone’s drumming skills were up to African standards local drum workshop facilitator Andy Fowler involved everyone during the evening programme in a very different but an equally entertaining drum workshop where we were all taken through word rhythms and drum playing techniques to produce some multi rhythmic and entertaining drum performances with increasing complexity, and fun shared entertainment for all. Tanzanian food prepared locally was greatly enjoyed. In short speeches the two Chairs of BTS and TDT, William Fulton and Julian Marcus, paid tribute to the highly successful 40 years of shared activities, promotion of friendship and support between Tanzania and the UK, which both organisations have successfully run in conjunction with many friends in Tanzania. There was also a magnificent photographic display and running power point presentation by Julian highlighting the work of TDT over 4 decades. Throughout the afternoon and evening the children seemed to have boundless energy in enjoying not only the drumming and dancing but also the bouncy castle in a small adjoining hall and one or two older members were spotted eyeing up this younger entertainment with not just a little envy although photographs failed to capture any actually being invited by the children to join them! Enormous thanks go to the local diaspora who put so much effort on behalf of BTS and TDT into arranging the evening, to the visiting guest performers and those selling Tanzanian artefacts and to Ann Marcus for her familiar and very successful sale of cards, bags and table mats made by girls at the Safe House in Mugumu, Mara Region, to raise funds for TDT projects. Although numbers attending from BTS membership and other local Tanzanians were not as many as were hoped for, all those present thoroughly enjoyed this very different celebration of our two organisations which for 40 years have done so much to support friendship and support for Tanzania.
Date: 29th October 2015
Venue : University College, London
Speaker: Professor Maia Green, University of Manchester
Read : Development Culture in Tanzania – The Effects of Aid
Continue reading “Development Culture in Tanzania – The Effects of Aid October 2015”
The recent seminar on the forthcoming Tanzanian general election has been written up in two blog posts. Ben Taylor’s is here and Aikande Kwayu’s here.
Continue reading “Seminar – Tanzania’s forthcoming general election – September 2015”
Date : 28 February 2015
Speakers: Abdul Paliwala, Yussuf Hamad, Frederic Longino, Aikande Kwayo
This seminar took place after the Government had made proposals for a new constitution, which differed from the proposals of the Warrioba Commission in that it remained the current two-parliament structure for the Mainland and Zanzibar. In the event the referendum on this was postponed. It created a very interesting discussion about the processes of creating a new constitution, and winning support for it in all parts of the country.
Professor Paliwala wrote up his presentation, which may be found on the Tanzanian Affairs Website
Date : 15 November 2014
Venue : Central Hall Westminster
The speaker at the AGM, Alan Roe, gave an update of the situation regarding mining and the possible exploitation of natural gas discovered off-shore in Southern Tanzania. He showed how minerals, especially gold, had not made a big difference to Tanzania’s GDP but had, since about 2000 made a bid difference to its earnings of foreign exchange. Much more was expected from the more recent discoveries of natural gas.
This presentation took place before the dramatic falls in world prices of oil and natural gas. The present position in Tanzania is much less clear.
Alan’s talk was summarised in Tanzanian Affairs.
His slides, including graphics and data, are here tanzania_and_extractives_2014.
Date : 10 November 2014
Speaker: Sarah Brennen
This seminar focussed on the proposals to build a huge modern development, predominantly for housing and recreation, on land in Kigamboni, “over the ferry”, in Dar es Salaam. The graphics here here show the scale and ambition of what is envisaged.
Continue reading “Future Visions and Urban Development in Dar es Salaam – November 2014”
Date : 20 October 2014
Speakers:
Elaine Ulterhalter, Professor of Education and International Development at the Institute of Education in London, put the expansion in Tanzania into an international context and looked at the issues of quality.
Felistas Kalomo, spoke about the Changarawe Project, near Morogoro, of which he is Director. It has been supporting the education of orphaned and destitute children for more than 15 years.
Anne Samson, advisor to VEPK, Village Education Project Kilimanjaro, spoke about programmes to improve primary and pre-primary education through training and improved materials.
A report of this seminar can be found on page 14 of the BTS Newsletter January 2015.
Date : 16 June 2014
Speaker: Hugh Wenban-Smith
A report on this seminar held on June 16 on Tanzania’s population growth is available here.