“Recurrent expenditure will total
8.6 trillion shillings, while investment in roads, railways, ports and
communication technology set to increase to 2.78 trillion shillings from 1.51
trillion shillings a year earlier, Mr. Mkulo the ex-minister of finance
said” David Mallinga Doya @ Bloomberg . This was according to the
budget ending 30th June 2012. In the new budget of 2012/2013 Mr. Mgimwa the current Minister of Finance
said “4bn/- would be used to
strengthen communications through Information and Communication Technology
(ICT)”.
The Kenyan budget as presented by Kenyan
Finance Minister Mr. Uhuru Kenyatta announces almost 1bn Kenyan shillings was to be invested in ICT
(2011-2012 budget) almost around 18bn Tanzanian Shillings almost four times
the amount of the money located by Tanzanian government for ICT development. This makes the competition of Dar es Salaam to
be the ICT hub of East Africa just above Nairobi to be next to impossible. Although
the government has done a lot to improve the ICT sector in major cities of
Tanzania still there is a lot to be done when it comes to compete at the
international level. Our aim is not to target Kenya as our main goal but it’s
inevitable to receive challenge from them as they are our neighbors and we co-exist
in the East African Community.
The ICT industry is currently
booming in Tanzania with Tanzania ranking as one of Africa’s top countries when
it comes to the number of users on the net. The country ranks 6th on World
Internet Stats’ chart with 5.9-million users, just below South Africa with
6.8-million users. In December 2000, Tanzania only had 115 000 people connected
to the Internet, but that number has grown significantly since then. In a
recent study, it was revealed that more than 5.9-million citizens now access
the Internet on a daily basis, out of the country’s population of over
42-million people. That is a penetration rate of 11.5% of the population.
This shows the potential of the
industry and its ability to promote the development of the nation by providing
job opportunities and allow investors to come to invest in different ICT
projects in Tanzania which in turn will generate more income to the government.
Currently there is hundreds if not thousands small local ICT companies by small
entrepreneurs providing services to the local people and organizations. Most of
these small companies have been the biggest solution of the problem of
unemployment in our country. The mobile phone companies are among the biggest
job providers in our country.
A lot of initiatives has been
taking place includes launching of the first offering of commercially-available
LTE (4G) technology for mobile Internet, beating African heavyweights South
Africa. Mobile operator Smile Telecoms launched the service in the capital Dar
es Salaam and makes use of the 800MHz frequency band but still it is not enough.
The government should put more money in the industry especially in the research
sectors so that people could come up with new plans and ways to tackle problems
by the use of ICT projects.
The current ways used by the
government to tackle some problems have been a major source of corruption and
inefficiency in operation. The positivity of investing in technology ways of
tackling problems can be witnessed in several government projects including The
Port Cargo system, the ascuda project of TRA and the
digital driver’s license systems has eliminate rooms of fraud and
corruption since everything has been digitalized and the efficiency has been
increased.
The government has to implement
more systems of these kinds to increase efficiency and tackle problems facing
the local communities. Recently the mobile phone service providers companies
have join hands with local USSD applications developers to reach people and
tackle their problems through SMS applications in their mobile phones which is
a great initiative. The government should support these kinds of projects and
use them as tool also to implement their plans and ideas to local people.
The HIV knowledge or census
awareness or other programs can be done using these kinds of digital applications.
This will help the government to cut down spending by reducing the cost of
teaching people physically and transfer professionals to the required areas
while simply they could use technology to reach the people in time and at a
lower cost.
The 2009 Uganda projects to reach
poor people through SMS which was facilitated by Google using the local mobile
phone company MTN and the NGO Grameen Foundation was proved to
be successful to the Ugandan local communities. The government can come up with
these kind of projects or help to facilitate the ideas whenever someone come up
with them so as to create the room for technology to be the problem solver of
our communities.
Among the reasons India and China
are successful today is due to the advancement of technology in their
countries. Technology enables you to tackle challenges as they come with a
required effective solution for the problems.
The industry needs more money to
funds small startups programs projects for young local entrepreneurs who are
aiming at coming with ideas which will impact the communities directly by
helping the people to overcome their daily problems. Most regards to TanzICT
and Kinu innovation hub and other incubation authorities such as DTBi for
helping to facilitate the projects. The reality is our neighbors are giving us
a real challenge with amazing projects and plans. ICT professionals in Tanzania
we have a bigger challenge as we are dwelling into the East African community
we need our government to back us up and support us in whatever we are doing
for better tomorrow of our country and African continent in general.