An envoy urges strong commitments on children's rights

The Canadian High Commissioner to Tanzania, Alexandre Lévêque has said Tanzania and other African nations can end early and forced child marriage especially if they were committed to promoting women and children rights. The envoy said over the weekend in Dar es Salaam when he briefed reporters over the First African Girls’ Summit which was held in Lusaka Zambia and organised by the African Union.  He said if we were to end child abuse, early and forced marriage then the governments and other stakeholders must improve and support fully participation of women in all   civil society organisations. Lévêque said through the Canadian Network for Maternal, Newborn and Child Health-DFATD’s network of missions around the world, “Canada is working to raise awareness of the harmful impacts of Child Early and Forced Marriage—CEFM and generate dialogue about ending this practice.” Tanzania being one of countries with the highest early marriage prevalence rate has recorded a slight decrease from 37 per cent in 2013 to 26 per cent in 2014 of the women aged 20-24 being married before their 18th birthday. Prevalence is highest in Shinyanga Region which has 59 per cent, followed by Tabora (58), Mara (55), Dodoma (53), Lindi (48), Mbeya (45), Morogoro (42), Singida (42), Rukwa(40), Ruvuma (39), Mwanza (37), Kagera (36), Mtwara (35), Manyara (34), Coast (33), Tanga (29), Arusha (27), Kilimanjaro (27), Kigoma (26), Dar es Salaam (19), and Iringa  eight per cent. According to the envoy, Canada has announced a contribution of $20 million over two years to UNICEF towards ending CEFM in July 2014. The UNICEF project aims to accelerate the movement to end child marriage in Bangladesh, Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Ghana, Yemen and Zambia by supporting efforts in those countries to strengthen programming and political support to end the practice. “We are also pleased to be providing institutional support to Girls not Brides, a global partnership to end child marriage. Canada is proud to support local-level community groups, non-government organisations, civil society organisations and local governments around the world in their CEFM programming efforts through the Canada Fund for Local Initiatives.”

Tigo music platform leverage 20 Tanzania artists at International level

As a digital lifestyle brand, Tigo music platform has leveraged songs of about 20 artists of the younger generations in the country, it has been learnt. Launched in January 2015 by Tigo-Tanzania, the platform was formed not only to allow easy access of the local musical contents by local artists, but also to improve Tanzania’s music industry which has become a popular brand with millions of music fans already attracted both locally and internationally.  Speaking in an exclusive interview Tigo Music Manager Balla Shareeph said early this week in Dar es Salaam that, “through the platform, Tanzania’s music is now known to the international music arena as many music fans have been downloading interesting contents for their enjoyments by streaming. Tigo Music platform is a pre-paid bundle made available to Tigo customers who are interested with local music of the lovely new generation, the platform service plays the role of promoting local artists’ musics with the opportunity to earn extra payment from their songs listened through the service.

Tigo Music Manager Balla Shareeph

The programme is being facilitated by Tigo Tanzania in partnership with a French based international music streamer Deezer, the service that provides Tanzanians with unlimited music experience. Tigo Music is now streaming in Honduras, Colombia, Paraguay, Guatemala, Bolivia, El Salvador, Ghana and Tanzania. In Colombia, it has quickly become the country's most popular and largest music streaming service. According to Shareeph, apart from giving Tigo customers unlimited access to local and international music, Tigo Music has also accorded local artists an opportunity to earn extra payment from their songs listened through the service. He said, music streaming is the fastest growing area for the global music industry and music content and is already the second most popular mobile phone feature in Sub-Saharan Africa. According to Shareeph, Tigo music platform has another role to play in the jurisdiction of promoting the digital lifestyle which Tigo Tanzania is currently spearheading in the country.  “One such important role is that, the platform offers trainings to young Tanzanian musicians with a view to make them know important issues such as intellectual property rights and marketing so as to increase musicians’ knowledge and skills into becoming experts”, he said. However, he said Tigo Tanzania is also encouraging local musicians through a partnership with Africa Music Rights, which sponsors, promotes and manages music rights across the continent. Tigo is a brand name for mobile services offered by the international telecommunications company Millicom in about 14 markets in Africa and Latin America.

Ngumburuni Forest Reserve is in danger of extinction

Ngumburuni Forest Reserve in Rufiji District, Coast Region is in danger of extinction from escalating deforestation and induced human activities such as farming and settlements in the conservation zone. This was unveiled at a training session for journalists that involving foresters and was spearheaded by the Tanzania Forest Conservation Group (TFCG) under the Mama Misitu Project in collaboration with the Tanzania Natural Resources Forum (TNRF). Hadija Kitango, Amina Ally and Juma Mkwanywe are among environmental activists who took part in the training, heaping blame on local leaders overseeing the forest reserve, claiming that they were behind encroachment in the forest reserve. “This forest is badly damaged…trees are cut and houses have been built in the forest reserve  and those people who invaded the forest reserve claim to have all the blessings from village leaders,” Hadija Kitango complained. “We have made a follow-up, so that we initiate action to remove invaders from the forest but we’ve failed because they were given the permits to settle in the protected forest reserves by village leaders around the forest zone,” she said. 

The Tanzania Forest Services (TFS) has been blamed for collecting levies from those making forest products without using a portion of those funds to villages around the place, or invest in their socio-economic development. Another challenge that fueled destruction in the Ngumburuni Forest Reserve is a poor understanding of the Forest Act of 2002, meant to provide for the management of forests, and repealing certain laws relating to forests and for related matters. The facilitator of the training from TNRF, Cassian Siang'a suggested that forest laws be written in simple Kiswahili so that more people become aware of what is provided therein. In recent years, the 5,100 ha forest has been singularly under pressure with massive harvesting of trees, scarred by deep-rutted tyre marks of the vehicles ferrying the logs. The villagers said the logs are ferried at night. Villagers and local leaders say the syndicates operate with the full and tacit backing of some district officials manning the department of forestry, as well as the police. The forest reserve has some rare animals, various tree species suitable for construction and rivers catchment areas now under the threat of drying up.

Graft tsar zeroes in on IPTL kingpins

The government’s new anti-corruption tsar has warned that alleged kingpins behind the Independent Power Tanzania Ltd (IPTL) Tegeta escrow account scandal, who have thus far avoided criminal charges, will not be left untouched, saying a painstaking collection of forensic evidence was underway across multiple jurisdictions. The invigorated Prevention and Combating of Corruption Bureau (PCCB) says it now has a secret weapon in the fight against graft in the form of President John Pombe Magufuli. Valentino Mlowola, the acting director general of PCCB, who took over in December, said he was still studying files on the Tegeta escrow account investigation. “What I may admit is that most of financial and corruption cases are difficult to investigate due to the fact that the evidence is scattered from one jurisdiction to another -- local and transnational -- that requires a cumbersome and painstaking procedure,” he told The Guardian when asked why the alleged masterminds of the escrow account scandal have not appeared in court. “Everyone should realise that criminal law does not provide for limitation of time. Whoever indulges himself in crime should know this fact, that one day he will have his day in court.” The government has brought graft charges against several suspects over the Tegeta escrow account probe, but faces criticism from some opposition members of parliament for failing to book alleged kingpins of the scandal, including businessman Harbinder Singh Sethi, the purported owner of IPTL. Mlowola, who was appointed head of the government’s anti-graft watchdog after President Magufuli sacked former PCCB chief Edward Hoseah due to the slow pace of the fight against corruption, said he would leave no stone unturned in the fight against graft.  “As long as the legal framework empowers PCCB to combat graft, I don’t see any hurdle in combating grand corruption. I have the mandate to enforce the Prevention and Combating of Corruption Act number 11 of 2007; therefore I will lead my institution into that fight,” he said.  Several cabinet ministers in former president Jakaya Kikwete’s government resigned in 2014 following graft allegations connected with the Tegeta escrow account row. Lawmakers said senior government officials fraudulently authorised the transfer of at least $122 million of public funds to a private company.  The funds came from an escrow account held jointly by state power company Tanesco and IPTL and went to the latter’s disputed owner Singh, through his company, Pan Africa Power (PAP) in 2013. Government officials denied any impropriety in the transfer of the funds, and PAP said the transfer was legal. However, investigations have revealed that the transfer of funds from the escrow account was fraudulent, leading to the resignations of several cabinet members in Kikwete’s government and the filing of criminal charges.

Tanzania to curb illegal sale of petrol and tax evasion

The government has ordered owners of all petrol stations across Tanzania to install special devices connected directly to fuel pumps to monitor business transactions as part of a wider crackdown on tax evaders in the country’s $3 billion-a-year oil import industry. The state-run Tanzania Revenue Authority (TRA) said in a public notice yesterday that all petrol stations in Tanzania must have the special electronic fiscal devices (EFDs) installed by  March 1 this year. “These special EFDs will be directly connected to (the) fuel pumps,” TRA acting commissioner general Alphayo Kadata said in the statement. He warned that oil marketing companies that fail to heed the directive would face stern penalties, including the shutting down of their petrol stations. The TRA announcement came just days after the government, via Prime Minister Kassim Majaliwa, suspended two senior officials of the state-run Weight and Measures Agency (WMA) after it was revealed that oil flow metres at the Dar es Salaam port had remained unused for the past five years. The metres were supposed to monitor fuel imports into the country for purposes of ensuring proper government revenue collection. 

Tanzania's Prime Minister Kassim Majaliwa

An official investigation has been launched into allegations that some oil marketing companies might have colluded with unscrupulous public officials to sabotage the oil flow metres and deny the government its rightful revenue. The suspended officials are the WMA chief executive officer (CEO), Magdalena Chuwa, and the agency’s Dar es Salaam port manager, Bernadina Mwijarubi. Oil accounts for the single biggest import in Tanzania, and it has also been proven as a source of massive tax evasion. The Prevention and Combating of Corruption Bureau (PCCB) is investigating one local oil marketing company alleged to have evaded around 8.5 billion/- in taxes by diverting transit fuel into the domestic market. The government hopes that the setting up of fully-functioning oil flow metres at the Dar es Salaam port and EFDs at petrol stations to monitor oil imports and actual fuel sales at the pumps will help to control the sector better.  According to the latest Bank of Tanzania (BoT) monthly economic review, the cost of oil imports in the year ending November 2015 fell by 22 percent to $2.86 billion, largely as a result of plunging global crude oil prices. The ongoing crackdown on oil tax dodgers who were virtually untouchable during the eras of previous governments has been one of the cornerstones of current president John Magufuli’s crusade to boost government revenue collection all-round since he took office in early November last year.  Among tough measures he has already implemented towards this goal was to sack or suspend several senior public officials, including the bosses of both the TRA and the Tanzania Ports Authority, pending investigations into claims of corruption related to the collection of government tax.