Tanzania ending 2012 on a high note?

Mobhare Matinyi, Washington DC. The Citizen, Tanzania. Friday, 28 December 2012 01:28

With economic hardships that are hitting the entire world and numerous challenges facing our nation, it is difficult to convince some Tanzanians that our country is ending the year on a high note. Yes, if we perceive things positively, truly, we are ending this year on a high despite many odds.

Starting with sports, one of the areas where Tanzanians are so dissatisfied to the extent that we can’t even notice some achievements, our netball national team, Taifa Queens, won an international title in Malaysia this December.The news was so big in the international sports press but almost non-existence in our local press. What a shame!

Taifa Queens won their first Netball Nations Cup with an impressive record after winning all of their five matches, beating hosts Malaysia 61-36 in the final game on Saturday, December 8, 2012. We ought to be proud of our ladies and accord them due respect for shielding us from the usual humiliation of losing in international competitions of every game that we stumble into.

While Taifa Queens were winning in Asia, both of our national soccer teams, Kilimanjaro Stars representing Tanzania Mainland, and Zanzibar Heroes, were playing for a third position after losing the semi-finals of the Cecafa Senior Challenge Cup to Uganda and Kenya respectively.

Anyway, considering that the Cecafa tournament had 12 teams and ours clinched third and fourth positions, this wasn’t so that bad. Don’t forget that in May our four teams met in the quarter finals of the Cecafa Club Championships in Dar es Salaam. In the end Young Africans and Azam reached the finals after eliminating Mafunzo of Zanzibar and Simba, respectively. Kudos to a determined Young Africans who won their second consecutive title.

On a low point, unfortunately, our representatives in the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, from July 27 to August 12, as predicted yielded nothing for our nation. So, let us wait for another turn in Rio de Janeiro in 2016 without forgetting that it was 1980 when we won our last Olympic medals in Moscow. Suleiman Nyambui and Filbert Bayi brought home silver medals in the 5,000 and steeplechase.

How about professional boxing, arguably one of our best bets in international competitions? Apart from athletics, boxing is the only game that we have won a world title recognized by World Boxing Union (WBU) in 1998 through Rashid Matumla.

Well, on Boxing Day our two boxers, Mada Maugo and Mbwana Matumla, punished fellow East Africans, Yiga Juma from Uganda and David Charanga from Kenya respectively. Maugo won by a first round knockout. Unfortunately, these were non-title international fights.

Perhaps the best moment in sports came last Saturday when our union national soccer team, Taifa Stars, taught the African champions, Zambia, how to play soccer. The Zambians, playing with some of the best players, lost 1-0 thanks to Mrisho Ngassa’s 45th minute powerful thunderbolt that wrote history. Imagine if we had fielded all of our professionals?

We may have done more in sports but at least these results are enough to console us. How about serious stuff? Don’t we have one such story? Yes, we do! Tanzania surprised many nations on December 19 when the Board of Directors of the United States Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) selected it as eligible for developing a proposal for a second compact program. We haven’t received the money yet, but we have a clear opportunity.

As we may recall, the first compact brought us an award of $698.136 million in 2008 to fund the construction of 430 kilometers of highways on the Mainland and 35 kilometers on Pemba Island. Another project took care of the electricity grid in seven Mainland regions and Unguja Island while the third project is increasing the water supply in Dar es Salaam to about 90 million litres, and 15 million litres in Morogoro.

The MCC victory was no meager achievement although none of the local press except this one saw the significance of the story that has placed Tanzania on a totally different map. None of the East African Community member states, for example, has won this award as this is not mere humanitarian aid, but a competition, and Tanzania was one of five winners from a list of 75 developing nations worldwide.

That wasn’t the last laughter for us as the Norwegian firm, Statoil, made another natural gas discovery in deep waters off the coast just before Christmas. The amount was mentioned as “significant” and this is their third find this year alone!

We have more things to put on the list, and honestly, if we stop whining about virtually everything and focus on the positives, 2012 wasn’t that bad bearing in mind the fact that others in countries like Syria can’t even discuss anything like this! God bless Tanzania!