Industrialisation in Tanzania: The Fate of Manufacturing Sector Lies upon Policies Implementations

Abstract

It is undeniable fact that manufacturing sector plays key role in growth of any economy and it is from this sector developing countries can catch-up with the rest of the world. While other countries are struggling in upgrading the level of their industrialisation to accommodate the concept of sustainability by going for more advanced and green technology hence increase productivity, others are still on the ground struggling to take off and catch-up with industrialized world, Tanzania being one of them. In spite of various strategies proposed and implemented, the sector contribution has remained low, and currently statistics shows a decline. From analysis, it is evidently that manufacturing sector remain to be significant for the growth of Tanzania’s economy despite her small GDP share relative to other sector like agriculture and service. The stagnant contribution share of sector is linked with; implementation lags on ambitious uncoordinated plans, slow transforming economic structure which is dominated by agriculture, and competition from low priced manufactured import from Asian economies. Thus, the best way to go is for a country to centrally coordinate all development policies to ensure connectivity and progressive monitoring of policies’ implementations, and attention should be paid on agro-allied resource-based industries which are labor-intensive and value-adding which will ensure massive job opportunities to large agricultural population and take advantage of vast arable agricultural land available.