https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c2kp9yev5e5o
When Tanzania gained independence in 1961, it was a country full of promise. With peace, a modest population, and a GDP per capita equal to more than 60 per cent of the global average, the young nation looked set to prove that Africa could develop on its own terms. Six decades later, after receiving more than $60 billion in foreign aid, Tanzania’s GDP per capita stands at less than a tenth of the global average. Its latest presidential election was “won” with 96 per cent of the vote. So much for the theory that aid fosters prosperity and democracy.
Foreign aid was meant to lift Tanzania—and much of Africa—out of poverty, encourage good governance, and underpin democratic institutions. Instead, it has too often entrenched dependency, distorted incentives, and propped up the very regimes that hold their nations back. It is not an outlandish idea to suggest that Tanzania might have been better off without it.
In the 1960s, Julius Nyerere’s vision of African socialism—Ujamaa—emphasised self-reliance. It failed economically, but at least had a coherent moral core: Tanzanians would build their future through collective efforts. However, when Ujamaa collapsed under the weight of its own inefficiencies, Western donors stepped up their aid, and Tanzania became even more aid-dependent.
The donors meant well, of course. Roads, schools, and hospitals were built, but the deeper effects were corrosive. A government that relies on donors rather than taxpayers has little incentive to be accountable. A political class financed from abroad can afford to ignore domestic critics. And when money keeps arriving regardless of results, corruption ceases to be a moral failure and becomes a business model.
By the 1980s, when Tanzania’s experiment with socialism had turned to dust, the IMF and World Bank arrived with a new cure: structural adjustment. Privatise, liberalise, stabilise. Yet again, aid came with conditions written in Washington rather than Dar es Salaam. The results were predictable. Public services were cut, state firms sold off for a pittance, and poverty deepened. Growth returned, but inequality widened. The economy became more open, but not more self-sustaining.
Aid has also had a perverse political effect. Tanzania today is formally democratic, but in practice, it is a dominant-party state. When the incumbent wins 96 per cent of the vote, it is not a triumph of democratic consolidation. Yet donors, anxious not to lose “partners,” prefer stability over scrutiny. In this way, aid props up authoritarianism under the comforting language of “engagement.”
Defenders of aid insist that without it, Tanzania would be poorer still. Perhaps. Yet Botswana, which largely rejected aid dependency, is today one of Africa’s most prosperous nations. Mauritius, too, charted its own course with limited assistance and a clear focus on trade and governance. Tanzania’s experience suggests that aid can substitute for reform, not supplement it. Easy money discourages hard choices.
There is also a psychological dimension. A nation perpetually receiving charity internalises a sense of incapacity. “Donor fatigue” has a mirror image: “recipient fatigue”—the quiet resignation that the country’s fate will always be decided in someone else’s capital. In this respect, aid has infantilised African politics, reducing national leaders to supplicants and citizens to passive beneficiaries.
To be fair, not all aid is wasted. Health and education programmes have saved lives and expanded access. But the overall ledger is damning. After six decades of handouts, Tanzania’s per capita income relative to the world has collapsed. Its democracy has stagnated. And its dependency remains structural.
The uncomfortable truth is that aid often delivers moral satisfaction to donors and political cover to recipients—but little genuine progress to those it is meant to help. Development comes from investment, trade, governance, and the slow accumulation of institutional trust—not from grants that arrive with quarterly reports and photo-ops.
Tanzania’s story should prompt humility in the West and self-reflection in Africa. The age of aid was born from compassion and guilt; it has lasted through habit and inertia. But after sixty years, the results speak for themselves. If foreign aid were a business, it would have been shut down for lack of return.
Perhaps the most radical idea now is the simplest: let Tanzania, and others like it, try to stand on their own.
The historical relationship between economic growth and human development is clear. For more than a century, the evidence has been remarkably consistent. When national incomes rise, people tend to live longer, eat better, learn more, and bury fewer children. GDP per capita captures the underlying drivers of human well-being, food security, infrastructure, public health systems, and the fiscal space to fund them.
ReplyDeleteThis basic insight fell out of fashion in the 1970s, when a cohort of development thinkers decided that growth was insufficiently subtle for the moral ambitions of the age. Development, they argued, was multidimensional; GDP was too crude, too capitalist, too Western. At the University of Lund, where I studied development (briefly, and with diminishing enthusiasm), this view became a doctrine that found a home in Tanzania’s aid establishment. SIDA, UNICEF and other agencies embraced aspects like child survival and basic needs with noble intent, but with unintended consequences. Populations grew, but economies did not. As “anonymous” correctly notes, the result was often larger, poorer, and more strained households.
There is a reason that economists, policymakers, and indeed governments themselves still rely on GDP per capita as the core measure of development. It is the best single proxy for a society’s capacity to provide opportunity, resilience, and dignity at scale. When incomes rise, everything else becomes easier. When they stagnate, everything else becomes a struggle.
Development is a long, slow, unglamorous work of building an economy that grows and keeps growing. After decades of well-intentioned experiments, the horse should go back in front of the cart. Prioritise growth, and the rest will follow
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ReplyDeleteWhat I deleted is replaced by this: "Sweden will phase out its development assistance to Tanzania by August 31, 2026. This decision is part of a broader reorientation of Sweden’s development aid, reflecting shifting foreign policy priorities and emerging global security challenges. The current cooperation strategy between Sweden and Tanzania has been extended until the phase-out date, ensuring continuity in ongoing programmes. Despite the change, Sweden will retain a permanent presence in Tanzania through its embassy in Dar es Salaam, focusing on political affairs, trade, investment, and support for Swedish citizens in the country".
DeleteSweden’s decision to end development aid to Tanzania by 2026 is more than a policy shift — it is a damning verdict on the global aid model itself. No nation has been more patient or more generous than Sweden. For six decades it poured money, trust and political goodwill into Tanzania, long after other donors quietly lost faith.
DeleteIf even Sweden is walking away, the aid industry should hear alarm bells.
Tanzania was supposed to be the success story — billions in support, endless programmes, unwavering donor enthusiasm. Yet chronic mismanagement, weak institutions and persistent corruption outlasted every initiative. The problem was never “insufficient aid”; it was the refusal of the system to confront failure.
Sweden’s continued diplomatic presence is sensible. But its aid exit exposes an uncomfortable truth: if the most committed donor of all has concluded that transformative development never arrived, then the rest of the aid circus should stop pretending it will.
This is not Tanzania’s failure alone — it is the failure of an aid architecture built to avoid accountability.
To abandon Tanzania in its time of greatest need is shameful. It goes to show how right-wing the Swedish government has become, retaining power solely through the support of the xenophobic 'Sweden Democrats.' This action should not be emulated; it should be denounced.
DeleteTo claim that the current Swedish government is far-right overlooks several important facts. Sweden has among the highest taxes and one of the strongest welfare systems in the world. With a population of less than 11 million, Sweden supports hundreds of thousands of refugees and migrants living on welfare. More than 800,000 migrants are illiterate in Swedish, making it difficult for them to integrate and become self-sufficient. Despite this, Sweden accepted another 100,000 refugees this year. Even after the government cut the aid budget, Sweden remains one of the largest per capita aid donors in the world. Any political scientist analysing Sweden would conclude that the current government is one of the most left-wing in the democratic world, and the Gini Coefficient would support this conclusion.
DeleteThe xenophobic Sweden Democrats gained popularity at the same rate as uncontrolled migration. While correlation does not imply causation, in 2011, Sweden had a GDP per capita of $60,000 (higher than the US at the time), but today it stands at $57,000. Over the same period, Sweden has shifted from being one of the safest countries in Europe to one of the most violent and dangerous.
Sweden has been the largest aid donor to Tanzania since the country's independence. Many Swedish politicians maintained close relationships with Tanzania's first president, supporting his socialist vision for Africa. However, any objective evaluation of Swedish aid to Tanzania would conclude that it was, at best, ineffective.