EAC installs free market project with a new treaty

Tanzania is also endowed with vast mining and manufacturing potential that investors, especially from Kenya, have been craving.

The few Tanzanians who are in the manufacturing and mining sectors are said to espouse monopolistic mentality to doing business, having established themselves during the Ujamaa days.

Retain supremacy

The state used Ujamaa policy to confine majority of the population to villages where the main activity was farming, in the process creating a huge market for the few who ventured in mining and manufacturing at the time.

A few months ago, Tanzania succeeded in negotiating to retain supremacy of its national laws in matters of immigration, access to land and right of business establishment within its territory in the draft EAC common market protocol.

Kenyan negotiators argue that allowing Tanzania to evoke its national laws on matters of land and business establishment could turn out to be a huge non-tariff barrier in the region.

However, experts reckon such a move is the only way a country just emerging from controlled economic system can cushion its local investors ill prepared for cut throat competition posed by firms from other states that adopted capitalism right from independence.

Tanzanians do not have national registration system and citizens must obtain letters from community elders for purposes of employment and other transactions.

This technically locks out thousands of individuals who had hoped national identity cards indicating that they are citizens of an EAC state would guarantee them employment opportunities in Tanzania

Tanzania’s land is either community or state owned.

An individual does not have the right to sell community land to an outsider without seeking the state’s permission (in which case the sold land immediately reverts to the state).