INTERESTING MESSAGE FROM MY LECTURER MR.DENIS MPAGAZE TO GRADUATES AND THE GOVERNMENT

FROM FACEBOOK WALL OF lecturer Mr. Denis Mpagaze

Baada ya dhiki ni faraja? About 800 students from PR will be graduating this November, 2013 at SAUT, achilia mbali kozi nyingine.

Every Tanzania goes to school. It is very amazing and wonderful. Education today in Tanzania is the norm, not exception. Is it because it is the key to life? I don’t know. I say it is a norm because every parent wants his child to go to school as a foundation of good life. I remember my parents used to tell us that, “ wanangu urithi pekee naoweza kuwapatia ni elimu” and they were ready to go hungry but our school requirements are fulfilled. What my parents believed was that after education journey the next was employment and we were motivated to work hard. At that time an adage, “baada ya dhiki ni faraja” had a meaning. But today the story is otherwise. Employment in Tanzania is not a guarantee except for those who join education courses-and they are many. The repercussion of this is that, some people are forced to study education out of their interest a situation which leads to an increase of vihiyos. Are you a new English teacher? Yes! I are! is a joke that manifests the result of forcing our children to join teaching carrier. The 1798 idea by Malthus Thomas that Africa will never have food production in relation to the population growth should read, “ Tanzania will never have employment production in relation to the graduate population” especially to a country where its people expect government to do everything. Here the wisdom by John F. Kennedy that we shouldn’t be asking what our country can do for us makes a lot of sense. It is very embarrassing statement but it has a beef anyway. Let me try you this. About 800 students from Public Relations and Marketing from SAUT are expecting to graduate in mid November this year. Will Kikwete’s regime be able to accommodate all of those graduates? It is very impossible.

But again, where can we take all these people, because they are our children? What makes me even happy is that most of these aspirant graduates are optimists. Most would hear saying, “I am going to establish my own business and becomes an entrepreneur. My God! This is sad story because I doubt whether my graduates are aware how difficult to be an entrepreneur is in Tanzania. My friends the environment of doing business is very unfriendly. High cost of capital, bad supporting infrastructure of energy, transport, communication, bad conditions for marketing and services in the interior and rural areas, power cuts, rising of urban crime in the darkness are discouraging the small entrepreneurs in the country. Financial institutions are not user friends to many small entrepreneurs in the country. Why? These institutions are there to make the loan beneficiaries even poorer. After all the majority of our students have no criteria to access loan. The experience show that accessing loan without collateral remains a myth that’s why Hernando Desoto informs us in his book, “The Mystery of Capital” that most of developing countries have failed to develop because of lack of formal system of registering asserts they have to be able to access loan. I know most of our students come from rural areas where they own very large piece of land but unregistered with no any title deed. But again those who dared to access loan from our financial institutions have been regretting to do that. In Kibondo some primary teachers earn less than 30,000 after the deductions of crazy loans. In Mwanza there is a saying among small business people that if you want to run bankrupt go to secure loan from our financial institutions.