The finance minister of Tanzania, Basil Mramba, has clear ideas on what his country can achieve and is equally clear on its financial shortcomings. Speaking to The Banker recently at the African Development Bank annual meeting in Kampala, the charismatic Mr Mramba said that Tanzania is the most peaceful and politically stable country in Africa. But despite its GDP growth rate of over 8%, he is critical of the financial infrastructure and the country’s inability to take advantage of its opportunities.
“Tanzanians are asleep compared with others in the region,” he says bluntly. “We are behind Kenya and Uganda, we are improving, we need to open up our agriculture. Tanzania has more land and we need to utilise it,” he says. “We can feed East Africa and we can export a lot but we are not producing these exports and smaller countries are doing better than us.”
