Infrastructure

Today we will speak about infrastructure in Tanzania. There are two different types of infrastructure, economic and social. Economic infrastructure refers to all things physical, think roads, electricity lines, public transport, parks and water management. We specifically refer to the facilities here. Social infrastructure on the other hand is often a bit more intangible, it includes things such as healthcare, education, housing, playgrounds, family services. While these often have a physical component as well, social infrastructure refers mostly to the social aspect of these services.

Let’s start with talking about economic infrastructure, unfortunately Tanzania does quite poorly on this. Out of their total 88.200 kilometers of roads a mere 3.704 are actually paved! This makes large areas of the country virtually inaccessible during the rainy seasons, which is a big barrier in their economic growth. The state of railways isn’t much better at only 3.569 kilometers of railway. This level of inaccessibility makes economic growth just so much harder. Their communications are doing better, albeit still not excellent. Let’s start of with the good, Tanzania has 104 mobile phone subscriptions per 100 people. In other words just about everyone is reachable. However they only have 13 internet subscriptions per 100 people, leaving an overwhelming majority of the population without reliable access to the world’s greatest information source. Furthermore only 36% of the country has access to electricity, 50% to water and 34% to sanitation. This means a whole lot of people simply do not have the tools available to them to fulfill their potential and develop themselves, which only hurts the country in the long run.

Which brings us to social infrastructure, the infrastructure that looks to develop humans. Luckily primary education completion rates are quite decent in Tanzania at 81% however only 41% of children move onto a secondary school and only 10% onto a upper secondary school level. This is definitely a problem as it means way too little people become educated and can develop the country.

It is very clear Tanzania’s infrastructure needs a lot of improvement, sooner rather than later. How do you believe this should be approached? And sector of infrastructure needs to be prioritized?

Sources:

EPDC. (2014). EPDC NEP Tanzania. Retrieved from epdc.org: https://www.epdc.org/sites/default/files/documents/EPDC%20NEP_Tanzania.pdf

Nations Encyclopedia. (n.d.). Tanzania – Infrastructure, power, and communications. Retrieved from nationsencyclopedia.com: https://www.nationsencyclopedia.com/economies/Africa/Tanzania-INFRASTRUCTURE-POWER-AND-COMMUNICATIONS.html

Takouleu, J. M. (2018, September 20). Tanzania: World Bank finances water, electricity and sanitation. Retrieved from afrik21.africa: https://www.afrik21.africa/en/tanzania-world-bank-finances-electricity-water-and-sanitation/

Water.org. (n.d.). Tanzania’s water crisis. Retrieved from water,org: https://water.org/our-impact/tanzania/

World Bank. (n.d.). Infrastructure. Retrieved from worldbank.org: https://data.worldbank.org/topic/infrastructure