By Festo Mulinda
Last year, I happened to overhear a conversation between two foreign colleagues. One asked the other, “Is Tanzania safe?” The response, delivered half-jokingly, was, “It is safe, until it isn’t.” Soon afterwards, political tensions surrounding October 29 election unrest reinforced that point. Investors, unlike citizens, do not wait for uncertainty to pass; they price it into their decisions immediately. That conversation returned to mind as Tanzania launched Vision 2050, an ambitious strategy to transform the country into a $1 trillion economy by mid-century.
National visions are designed to inspire citizens and reassure investors that a country’s future is worth backing. Vision 2050 succeeds in projecting ambition. But ambition alone cannot overcome arithmetic.
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