STATEMENT BY H.E. JAKAYA MRISHO KIKWETE, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED REPUBLIC OF TANZANIA, AT TED CONFERENCE, ARUSHA, June 7, 2007:

Ladies and Gentlemen,

I expect that you have been warmly welcomed to Tanzania, and I have no doubt that you are enjoying your stay in Arusha. But let me also extend my warm welcome to you to Tanzania, the land of Kilimanjaro and Zanzibar.

I am glad that it has been possible for me to be here with you today and I thank the organisers of TED conference, my new friends Emeka and Chris, for inviting me.

I hope it is not an attempt to figure out my reputation that you slotted my talk in the session titled: Leadership and Truth. In any case, there is no other way than being truthful in sharing my experience and challenges in leading a poor developing nation.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Obviously, there are uniform challenges for leaders of all nations, big and small. Our good friend Bono once complained of the loneliness of sitting around the table where everyone works for you and the emptiness of going almost everywhere with a private plane. Apparently, Presidents and Rock Stars can share similar agonies.

But leading a developing nation, a poor one like Tanzania, presents its own unique challenges.

The biggest challenge is fighting extreme poverty. Most of our people are extremely poor – employing all their efforts, creativity and imagination to merely survive. We have a lot to do to make available the basic needs that most of us take for granted. We have to uplift our people by giving them opportunities and incentives.

For us in Tanzania, the predicament is that everything is a priority and a must: reducing maternal mortality rate – now standing at 578/100,000; increasing access to safe water – now at 54 percent for rural dwellers; stemming the tide of new HIV infections – now at 7 percent; reducing unemployment – now hovering above 12.7 percent; increasing access to healthcare – from the current ratio of 1 doctor to 20,000 people, one of the lowest in the world; connecting the entire country with roads; increasing accessing to lending for entrepreneurs, I could go on and on. We have made considerable progress since independence but the challenges are still monumental.

Given that we are a poor country and have a lot to do to improve the human condition of our people, the biggest challenge is resource constraint. And, with that, comes the painful exercise of choosing priorities among priorities.

Resource constraint compels us to pick between more education for some or some education for all, between roads and clinics, between water and electricity, between ARVs and better pay for civil servants, between more judges and more nurses, between bed-nets and schoolbooks, and so on.

Of course one can be creative in a situation of difficulty. But, in this, you simply reach a point where there is no room for maneuver and you simply need to make tough decisions. And, we have learnt to make tough decisions everyday, and we have registered tremendous success in things we were able to do. Primary and Secondary education is one example.

But, we believe the ultimate prescription in fighting poverty and underdevelopment is ensuring sustained economic growth – with private enterprise and people's initiatives as the driving forces. Here in Tanzania, we have come a long way towards this goal. We have had a history of a closed political system and a command state economy. But, twenty years ago, we made a firm choice to take up the politics of choice. And, it was natural that the politics of choice go hand in hand with market economy.

This was a revolutionary leap for us. I know that many African countries took a similar step. But what is unique about Tanzania's experience is that this leap went seamlessly. And, what is important is that this brilliant idea – the idea of combining the politics of choice, participation, transparency, accountability, and free enterprise – is working well for us and is the best way forward.

… above all, we have to give opportunity for new leaders to emerge and develop capacities to manage good governance.

The debate between more government is a wrong one. The question is about better government. Africa's next chapter depends on that. And the challenge for us in African leadership is to provide it. We in Tanzania are keen on providing it.

I thank you for your kind attention!