Unlocking an economy: Can we dare to dream?

So I decided to go through the World Bank statistics about Tanzania. For several hours, using MatLab, I did some plots, for 19 to 20 years period data (1991 – 2010)! Today I will bombard you with a lot of statistics, most of which, unfortunately, Tanzania does not provide in a consistent way. As you look at the plots (click to enlarge), which should be self-explanatory, note the following:

1. Post secondary enrollment in Tanzania is roughly at 1%! That is, 99% of qualified students can not make it to college/university.
2. Secondary school enrollment is below 30%. Of all primary school enrollment, at least 70% do not go to secondary school.
3. The highest 20% income earners have continued to accumulate more of the income. They take about 47% of the total income. The lowest 20% takes about 6% of the total income, and this share has declined.
4. Per capita GDP has consistently increased. Starting at a negative GDP growth rate, our GDP has been increasing since 1990.
5. We don’t have any records of the unemployed in the country.

NOTE: The data I obtained for the unemployment rate are:

• 1991 — 3.6%
• 2001 — 12.9%
• 2007 — 11.7%

These are the official data. An effort to compute Tanzania’s unemployment rate failed completely. I have tried to make sense of the employment-to-population ratio (data found here and here) as compared to the labor force, defined here. Strangely, for example, every year, there were more employed people than the labour force by really big differences.

Tanzania’s GDP has continued to increase which should indicate that Tanzanians have become wealthier. Despite the low enrollment rates in tertiary education, I wonder, considering our relatively higher employment-to-population ratio, what makes the country rank among the poorest countries of the world? Put differently, what constitute the greatest share of GDP? Does it reflect the major form of employment countrywide? To borrow from my favorite author, are we producing efficiently?

For the interested reader, the following are my sources:

• World Data Bank at WB
• Electoral Institute for the Sustainability of Democracy in Africa (EISA)
• Tutaokoka Blog
• Tanzania – Analytical Report for Integrated Labour Force Survey 2006
• National Bureau of Statistics
• Tanzania Country Report on the Millennium Development Goals 2010