Recently, the World Bank released its list of nations that most successfully reduced domestic poverty from 2000-2015. The top five countries reduced poverty between 3.2 percent and 2.6 percent between 2000 and 2015, with Tanzania reducing the highest percentage. The top fifteen countries lifted 802.1 million individuals out of poverty. This article outlines the successful poverty reduction strategy of Tanzania and international support that caused the most drastic reductions in poverty around the world.
History of Tanzanian Poverty
Historically, Tanzania has been one of the most impoverished countries in the world. In 2000, 86 percent of Tanzanians were impoverished, but this number dropped to 28 percent in 2018.
Tanzania reduced poverty by 3.2 percent in 11 years, making it the country that reduced poverty the most in the last 15 years. The poverty reduction strategy of Tanzania is due to three elements: reducing income poverty, increasing access to basic necessities and improving government infrastructure.
Economic Growth
The first strategy focuses on sustainable economic growth, which includes decreasing inflation and focusing on growing parts of the economy that have the largest poor population. The employment and empowerment programs utilized in these strategies focus on agriculture, manufacturing, mining and tourism in addition to macroeconomic growth in exports and imports. Between 2000 and 2015, Tanzania’s export volume grew from 120 to 272, making it the world’s 130th largest exporter. This successfully increased Tanzania’s GDP from $13.3 billion to $47.3 billion.
Tanzania’s unemployment rate dropped from 12.9 percent in 2001 to 10.3 percent in 2014, because of the liquid capital that injected into Tanzania’s economy, a focus on job creation and an industrial transition that opened new jobs. The economic focus of the Tanzanian government lifted thousands of individuals out of poverty and made it the seventh-largest economy in Africa.
The Impoverished Individual
The second strategy focuses on the personal needs of those in poverty. Poverty reduction efforts seek to increase the quality of life and ensure that those in poverty have access to social welfare. Efforts concentrated on education, clean water, sanitation and health services. Because of these efforts, Tanzania increased the number of individuals who had access to clean water by 9 percent between 1990 and 2009. In the same period of time, Tanzania’s health care became more accessible. As a result, child mortality rates dropped from 162 to 108, infant mortality rates dropped from 99 to 68 and the rate of malaria contraction dropped from 40.9 percent to 40.1 percent.
Another poverty reduction strategy focused on education. Tanzania made education more accessible by increasing funding for education, bettering its transportation mechanisms (including roads) and emphasizing vocational education and education for girls. This focus on education increased school enrollment from 68.8 percent in 2000 to 84.6 percent in 2015.
Tanzania’s Commitment to its People
The third strategy is one of the governmental commitments to the impoverished Tanzanian people. This included ensuring the enforcement of the law, the accountability of the government for its people and the prioritizing of stability in order to avoid poverty. The IMF reported that Tanzania has become more accountable to its people, less corrupt and has increased citizen participation in governance, thus ensuring an effective political framework.
International Participation in Tanzania’s Poverty Reduction Strategies
The international community was critical to Tanzania’s successful poverty reduction. The United States, Tanzania’s largest source of aid, began giving Tanzania foreign aid in 2006. In that year, the U.S. gave $151.29 million. This number increased every year, with the U.S. giving Tanzania $633.5 million in aid in 2015. This aid has consistently gone towards the very areas in which Tanzania has seen the most improvement: humanitarian aid, governance, education, economic development and health.
While Tanzania still has a long way to go until it completely eliminates poverty, it has made significant progress since the beginning of the millennium. The poverty reduction strategies of Tanzania, including economic growth, investment in individuals and infrastructure and governance development, have been successful to a great extent. International aid has consistently been a contributing factor to Tanzania’s ability to reduce poverty and has successfully targeted the areas in which Tanzania required the most improvement.
– Denise Sprimont
Photo: Flickr