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Sharpening up Africa’s Press

First, I say: "The darkest thing about Africa is our ignorance of it." That used to be said, in the old colonial days, as a pejorative. Now it is simply wondering at the mysteries of fast forward momentum.

Africa is changing so incredibly rapidly, and no country more so than Tanzania, that none of us can quite keep up with it. The beauty of reintroducing capitalism, after Tanzania’s first president, the widely esteemed Julius Nyerere, had effectively done way with it for over 25 years, is that there are now a million points of light, instead of just one — economic endeavour is widespread, effervescent everywhere, almost beyond the government’s control. These days the mobile phone is leading the way, spreading commerce, widening markets, facilitating deals, that before went at the slow pace of dirt roads and palavas under the baobab tree.

The phone is playing the role of the hut tax, introduced by the British when they colonised much of Africa in the nineteenth century. Forced by the tax to earn cash, men had little choice but to leave their farms and go to work in the mines and on the plantations. Today, phone pylons are being erected in the remotest backwaters. Somehow dirt-poor villagers are finding the money — and presumably the work to earn the money — to make calls.

Quite obviously, the GNP of this country is only partially recorded. By the lights of the statisticians most people are still living on less than $1 a day — another myth. Still, we can get a rough idea of progress from the GNP statistics. Tanzania is growing at seven per cent a year. Soon it looks as if it will be eight per cent. It could go even higher if the government can push more extension agents into the countryside to educate the peasantry in modern farming techniques.

Tanzania is becoming a lion, emulating the tigers of East Asia who jumped from obscurity to success, from rags to riches in a generation and a half. I tell my students as it is: "Your English is OK, but it’s not good enough for the world Tanzania is entering. I warn you within ten years a new generation of Tanzanians, better educated than you, will come snapping at your heals and wanting your jobs. You have to read more: start with the novels of those clever Nigerians — Chimanda Adichie (Orange prize winner), Ben Okri (Booker prize winner) and Wole Soyinka (Nobel literature laureate) and go from there.

Tanzanian journalism is gradually improving. Only a decade ago there were only a couple of newspapers and they were government owned. Now there are a dozen, privately owned, along with radio and TV stations. The TV, which used to be amateurish, is now quite slick with soap operas imported from Nigeria and South Africa. I used to worry that Tanzanians were being brainwashed to buy the useless artifacts of Western consumption, but a more careful look at advertising sees that it is still at the "Omo" soap powder stage, with a lot of it given over to competitive phone companies and government sponsored ads on how to peel a condom over a cucumber.

In May, 2006, according to US AID, who financed this course, the number of stories per month on corruption was 20. Now it’s up to 160. My students are intent on pushing those numbers up. During the last two months I sent them out into the field to pick and probe into the darkish reaches of business and government. Their exposes are fascinating — the use of formaline, used for preserving dead bodies, adapted for preserving fish; police corruption, extorting money from nervous Asian visitors; senior officials in Zanzibar selling of the land of peasants to investors who then build hotels illegally close to the water’s edge; the Revenue Authority colluding with business men on the border with Kenya to divert import and export duties into their own pockets; and corrupt wild life officials allowing illegal game hunting in return for kickbacks.

All this sharpening up is part of what going forward economically and politically demands. The terrific pace already set will only be sustained if the society can be more open, more honest and more law abiding. These journalists know this. They are beginning to turn the searchlight on the hidden areas of darkness. They, I told them, are the eyes and ears of society. They maybe poorly paid compared to other professions, but they are part of the cutting edge as their country goes forward.

Jonathan Power is a widely published commentator based in London. He can be reached at JonatPower@aol.com