Tanzania: We produce what we don't consume and consume what we don't produce, Why?
It is no secret that pharmacies in Dar es Salaam are full of imported medicine. Not that they care not to stock locally made products, but more often than not consumers, when visiting the facilities even for over the counter medicine like painkillers, they ask for products made outside Tanzania.
The irony of all these is that, as we refuse to consume medicine made in Tanzania, many of our kinsmen readily do take "medicine" made by the "witchdoctors" and sometimes half baked traditional healers, who don't even know the names of the elements in the mixtures they use to treat patients!
When Premier Kassim Majaliwa appeared in the press, denouncing Manyara manufactured Minjingu fertilizer bag, labelled 'made in Kenya', he was not amused. He ordered the company to write an apology letter to the President.
The factory management tried in vain to explain to the Premier that, they had agreed with the distributors the fertilizer be packaged that way. What they could not tell Hon Majaliwa is that, by falsely labelling the vital input as being made in Kenya, it assured them of market.
Farm input companies making their products in Tanzania often find themselves between thick and thin when competing at times, with superior quality, and maybe cheaper similar imported products. As members of EAC and Sadc, we have to allow those countries to compete with our factories, sometimes regardless of our capacity.
In the past, I wrote in this column that if you want to know to what extent we are obsessed as a nation with imported goods, just visit a village kiosk, and count the number of locally made products versus imported ones! Our love for imported goods somehow fuels more on the growth of counterfeit industry. If a small business owner starts making sweets at her/his backyard, and labels them as proudly made in Tanzania, the perception is, there will be hard time marketing the same. Just label them, made in India, Kenya, Italy, China, etc marketing and survival become a lot easier. Why, that is the question we need to answer as a nation. By: By Saumu Jumanne, THE CITIZEN
