Science and technology in Tanzania describes developments and trends in higher education, science, technology, innovation policy, and governance in the United Republic of Tanzania since the turn of the century.
Socio-economic context Tanzania has been a multiparty parliamentary democracy since the early 1990s. In common with much of Africa, growing indebtedness and falling commodity prices forced the country to adopt a series of structural adjustment programmes proposed by the International Monetary Fund between 1986 and the early 2000s. Over this period, the country’s poor economic performance prompted a progressive abandonment of neoliberalism. Economic indicators subsequently picked up, with growth averaging 6.0–7.8% per year between 2001 and 2014. Though still high, donor funding dropped substantially between 2007 and 2012. As the economy becomes less reliant on donor funding, it may gradually diversify.
Impressive growth since 2001 had not significantly altered the country’s economic structure by 2015. Agriculture accounted for 34% of GDP in 2013, compared to 7% for manufacturing. GDP per capita remains low by the standards of other members of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) but nevertheless progressed between 2009 and 2013. Tanzania is also a member of the East African Community (EAC) with which its trade more than doubled between 2008 and 2012. The African continent plans to create an African Economic Community by 2028, which would be built on the main regional economic communities, including the EAC and SADC.
Tanzania graduated to lower middle-income status in 2019. The National Development Plan 2016–2021 (2016) emphasizes industrialization and human development as twin priorities. The plan uses the phrase ‘business unusual’ to encapsulate its ambition of graduating to a middle-income, semi-industrial economy by 2025, a goal first set out in the Tanzania Development Vision to 2025 (1999).
As of early 2021, several major infrastructure projects are being implemented that have implications for science, technology and innovation. In April 2017, construction got underway of the Tanzania Standard Gauge Railway system, which will extend into Rwanda, Uganda, Burundi and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. This railway replaces an old metre-gauge system and is expected to reduce freight costs by 40%. As of June 2020, the first phase (300 km) was about 80% complete; the remaining four phases are set to add an additional 1 450 km.
Status of national innovation system Status of national innovation systems in the Southern Africa Development Community in 2015, in terms of their potential to survive, grow and evolve Category Country DescriptionFragileDemocratic Republic of Congo, Lesotho, Madagascar, Swaziland, ZimbabweFragile systems tend to be characterized by political instability, be it from external threats or internal political schisms.ViableAngola, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Seychelles, Tanzania, ZambiaViable systems encompass thriving systems but also faltering ones, albeit in a context of political stability.EvolvingBotswana, Mauritius, South AfricaIn evolving systems, countries are mutating through the effects of policy and their mutation may also affect the emerging regional system of innovation. Source of table: Mbula-Kraemer, Erika and Scerri, Mario (2015) Southern Africa. In: UNESCO Science Report: towards 2030. UNESCO, Paris, Table 20.5.
Higher education
In 2010, Tanzania devoted 1.7% of GDP to higher education and 6.2% of GDP to education as a whole, one of the highest rates in Africa.
Even though Tanzania had eight public institutions of higher education and a plethora of private institutions in 2015, fewer than half of secondary school-leavers who qualify for entry obtain a place at university. The establishment of the Nelson Mandela African Institute of Science and Technology in Arusha in 2011 should augment Tanzania’s academic capacity considerably. This university has been designed as a research-intensive institution with postgraduate programmes in science, engineering and technology. Life sciences and bio-engineering are some of the initial niche areas, taking advantage of the immense biodiversity in the region. Together with its sister institution set up in Abuja (Nigeria) in 2007, it forms the vanguard of a planned pan-African network of such institutes.
A needed assessment in 2011 concluded that 'there must be a coordinated effort between the education and employment sectors to ensure that the education system is producing not only qualified graduates, but those whose knowledge and skills are both in demand and which will meet the development needs of the country. Unfortunately, issues of student performance, quality of teaching and students’ lack of readiness for jobs in science and technology are widespread in Tanzania'. The study also revealed that data gathered during the study 'show a lack of human and material resources throughout mainland Tanzania and Zanzibar. The needs appear to be more dire in rural versus urban areas, however, only marginally so'.
A 2011 review of higher education in Tanzania found a certain indifference to research and resistance to
change in the institutional culture of universities. These showed an administrative bias, despite policy instruments being in place to develop and finance the traditional tasks of higher education, training, research and extension. 'The weak recognition of research and extension produces discrimination or lack of incentives for active researchers', observed the study. It also found that the insufficient quality and relevance of the research undertaken discouraged policy-makers and private sector from using local research outputs and prompted them to seek research findings from abroad. The study also pinpointed 'the lack of institutional and national mechanisms for assessing research performance' and the 'limited efforts in attracting the private sector, individuals, business people, trade unions and community organizations into contributing significantly to the national science, technology and innovation effort by way of funding or shared sponsorship of research programmes'.
After its Innovation and Entrepreneurship Centre opened in 2015, the University of Dar es Salaam incorporated practice-oriented innovation and entrepreneurship courses into its curricula, as undergraduate and postgraduate electives. The Centre offers business counselling and incubation services to students, staff and SMEs, including business plan development, advertising and marketing and financial guidance.
Research trends
Financial investment in research
In 2010, the United Republic of Tanzania devoted 0.38% of GDP to research and development. This was equivalent to $7.7 per capita (in current purchasing power parity dollars) and $110,000 per researcher (head counts) in current purchasing power parity dollars). The breakdown of research spending was as follows: government (57.5%), business (0.1%), higher education (0.3%), private non-profit (0.1%) and foreign sources (42.0%). Tanzania was ranked 90th in the Global Innovation Index in 2021, up from 97th in 2019.
By 2013, the most recent year with data as of 2021 according to the UNESCO Institute for Statistics, the United Republic of Tanzania devoted 0.51% of GDP to research and development.
Human investment in research
There were just 69 researchers (head count) per million population in 2010. This was similar to the researcher density in Mali and Mozambique (66), Angola (73) and Burkina Faso (74) but much lower than the research density in the other SADC countries of Namibia (343), Botswana (344) and, above all, South Africa (818).
One in four researchers was a woman in Tanzania in 2010 (25.4%). A 2011 assessment of women scientists’ participation in science, engineering and technological industries found that patriarchy and male dominance continued to influence gender inequalities in Tanzanian society and that this, in turn, had a negative impact on the levels of participation of women scientists even within industries based on science and engineering.
Scientific output
In 2014, Tanzania counted 15 publications per million inhabitants in internationally catalogued journals, according to Thomson Reuters' Web of Science (Science Citation Index Expanded). This placed Tanzania tenth out of the 15 SADC countries, well behind Namibia (59), Mauritius (71), Botswana (103) and, above all, South Africa (175). The average for sub-Saharan Africa was 20 scientific publications per million inhabitants, compared to a global average of 176. Two-thirds of the publications produced by SADC countries had at least one foreign co-author. Between 2008 and 2014, Tanzania's main scientific partners were the USA and the UK, followed by Kenya, Switzerland and South Africa.
In 2019, Tanzania produced 30 publications per million inhabitants. Its main scientific partners over the 2017–2019 period were the USA and UK, followed by South Africa, Kenya and Germany.
Science policy Institutional context The main body in charge of science, technology and innovation policy in Tanzania is the Ministry of Communication, Science and Technology and its main co-ordination agency, the Commission for Science and Technology (COSTECH). COSTECH co-ordinates a number of research institutes engaged with industry, health care, agriculture, natural resources, energy and the environment. A 2011 survey found that the public policy making process was inadequately informed by research-based evidence in Tanzania, largely due to the limited interface between researchers and public policy-makers in the government. Among the challenges threatening the research-policy linkage, the study cited: the poor quality of research findings capable of informing policy; political interference and the lack of a National Research Reference Bureau; lack of good governance; the preference for supply-driven research, rather than demand-driven research, leading to much of research being shelved; the ratification of too many international conventions with little prior analysis of their relevance to Tanzania and; an overdependence on donors.
Reform of national science policy The reform of Tanzania’s national innovation system got under way on 15 December 2008 with the first consultation of stakeholders at a workshop in Bagamoyo (Tanzania). The reform was implemented under the umbrella of the One UN programme, which had been launched the previous year, inspired by a report by a high-level task force proposing that the United Nations focus on Delivering as One. Within the One UN programme, several United Nations agencies worked together to formulate joint programmes for each of the eight pilot countries, with funding originating mainly from the One UN Fund. Tanzania was one of these eight pilot countries. (The One UN programme has since become the United Nations Development Assistance Programme.)