Samia: How Tanzania used IMF, AfDB loans to improve livelihoods

By AGGREY MUTAMBO

Tanzanian President Samia Suluhu Hassan has defended her usage of loans from multilateral lenders, telling an audience in Accra that the institutions were her country’s lifeline in the Covid-19 pandemic.

Samia, appearing on a panel alongside Presidents of Ghana, Mozambique and the Comoros, said the loans received from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the African Development Fund (AfDB) helped her stabilise the economy, improve the quality of learning environment and expand the reach of clean water supply.

“With the support of the AfDB and other multilateral lenders, I have done well,” she told an audience on Tuesday during the Presidential Dialogue on Africa’s Development challenges and opportunities, part of the Annual Meetings of the AfDB this year in Ghana.

Covid funds

“Due to Covid-19, IMF gave us some money as economic bailout. Most of the countries used that money for purchasing sanitisers and those [other] items needed to fight Covid-19. But for me, I thought Covid-19 meant decongestion of students in the classroom.

“[We] had 110-120 pupils in one classroom. I have been able to decongest them and now I have 45-50 pupils in one classroom. I thought Covid-19 means availability of water, I have taken that money and used it for supplying clean and safe water to most parts of my country. When I came in, availability of water was 72 percent and I have moved it close to 80 percent. I am expecting, in 2025, it will be 95 percent in urban areas and 85 percent in villages.”

Tanzania, like several African countries, was hit hard by the Covid-19 pandemic. Tanzania’s economy shrunk from 6.8 percent growth to 4 percent after Covid-19, even though the country, unlike its neighbours, did not go on a lockdown and did not initially order compulsory mask wearing, nor tap into vaccines. But after Samia was sworn in as president in March last year following the death of her predecessor John Pombe Magufuli, she made changes, including calling for citizens to take up preventive measures, such as mask wearing and hand hygiene, to curb the spread of Covid-19.

Nonetheless, the country drew benefits from multilateral lenders keen to aid a response to Covid-19.

Covid response

Under the Crisis Response Budget Support Programme, the AfDB disbursed $50.7 million loan in 2020 to aid response measures, including strengthening health systems and emergency responses.

And after President Samia came to power in March 2021 and Tanzania agreed to share data on Covid-19, as well as coordinate response with international bodies, the IMF Executive Board approved a $265.2 million in Special Drawing Rights (SDRs), equivalent to about $372.4 million. Given under the Rapid Credit Facility (RCF), the money was meant to aid Tanzania’s balance of payments as the country faced a shortage of revenues.

The IMF said at the time that the money was also to help catalyse support from development partners to support Tanzania, if it strengthens governance and transparency around the pandemic.