THE Tanzania economic growth is volatile, non-inclusive and marked by stagnation in industry since the retirement of the first president Mwalimu Julius Nyerere in 1985.
The growth is not inclusive and the country continues to register population below poverty line; the estimates of which sits at 29% in 2014.
Further, job creation has been marginal and slow, clearly only able to absorb a fraction of the working age population that enter the labour market each year.
The only way to do away with all these “evils” is to capitalize in sustainable industrial development. Not politicizing it.
Knowing the value of production economies, Minister for Industry, Trade and Investments, Charles Mwijage once said poor countries would never develop if they depend very much on importations.
Mwijage was stressing a point that, no country has attained her economic freedom and tangible development without having established production industries.
He said the distribution of global income remains extremely unequal, and in absolute terms, the income inequality between rich and poor countries has continued to grow.
This growth will never end and poor countries would remain poor if they don’t produce and export final goods.
In the process of development and growth of a countries’ economy, industries have played a major role in this. This can be witnessed on how industries changed the economy of most European countries, started in the industrial revolution in England. (link: http://webs.bcp.org/sites/vcleary/modernworldhistorytextbook/industrialrevolution/irbegins.html)
The increase in scientific inventions and innovations largely contributed to such a phenomenon.
Therefore, increase and improvement in knowledge leads to development of manufacturing in the country. Every level in the education system has to be developed so as to provide a knowledgeable society that will contribute to the development of the stagnated sector.
The education system of Tanzania comprises of five levels; pre-primary education, primary education, secondary education, tertiary and university education. The provision of quality education to each of these stages will provide an individual with enough knowledge, hence this requires heavy investment in education.
Currently, much emphasis has been put on primary, secondary and university education leaving behind vocational training which to a large part, provide the technical aspects of different careers. Evidence from many countries show that investments in technical education has led to the development of the manufacturing as it provides the sector with enough technicians and operators.
During the Tanzania presidential election 2015, Dr. John Magufuli, who later won election, promised to making Tanzania an industrial country, also depicted in the National Budget 2016/17.
But Dr. Magufuli has not been quoted anywhere emphasizing the vocational training during his political campaigns.
As industrialization largely depends on the availability of technical know-how, emphasis to the technical education would have provided a bright future for attainment of the well-orchestrated industrial strategy in the country with positive results.
Providing vocational studies to the society does not only provide manpower for the industries, but also helps in solving unemployment problem. Currently the education policy of Tanzania has not provided much emphasis on vocational training.
The National Budget 2016/17 has less showed concern regarding the involvement of improving technical education for industrial development. Despite the education sector being allocated more than the industrial sector still less concerns have been placed on the development of technical education.
Development of vocational training has both short-term and long-term effects being increase in employment opportunities and development of the industrial sector respectively.
For instance, according to “The role of technical and vocational education in the national development of Bangladesh’’ (link: ) , South Korea, Thailand and Malaysia in the past 25 years, have managed to attain high living standards and economic growth because of the adoption of appropriate education systems that met the demands of the country and the world.
Technical and vocational education is important as it increases the labour productivity.
On the other side, in terms of resources the country has abundant for the development of the sector. Getting raw materials for feeding the industries will not be a problem, for example the country has abundant land that can be used in producing raw materials especially agricultural products such as sisal, cotton and so on.
UN- WIDER working paper 2015/16 – ‘Industry in Tanzania’ shows that natural resources found in the country and are still being discovered provide the evidences that the industrial sector in the country has a promising future.
But for the sector to create enough jobs, reduce poverty, improving the sector and lead to development, the government has to put more emphasize on improving the education system especially the technical and vocational education as this captures a large part of the society than other education systems.
In a nutshell, our much trumpeted industrial development will be inextricable if we don’t embrace and invest heavily in vocational trainings.