The Kiswahili proverb ‘Mgeni njoo, mwenyeji apone,’ which translates to let the guest come so that the host or hostess may benefit, can describe better the one-day state visit of India’s Prime Minister, Narendra Modi in Tanzania on Sunday.
The Indian leader was on a tour of four countries in Africa to drum up business between India and African countries and tie up energy and trade deals. He had visited Mozambique and South Africa and left for Kenya later on Sunday.
He and his host, President John Magufuli signed five agreements, including one to provide credit amounting to 92 million dollars to improve water accessibility on the island of Zanzibar where India will extend a line of credit for the rehabilitation and improvement of the water supply system for the semi-autonomous island.
The Indian leader said India would also offer a 500 million Dollars of concessional credit for water supply connections to 17 cities in addition to an existing 100 million Dollars. The two leaders had agreed to deepen diplomatic and economic ties in agriculture, food security, trade, natural gas and other vital sectors.
Under food security, India and Tanzania agreed on investments to boost export of pulses to India to help the Asian economic powerhouse to ease the shortage of pulses in the country that has led to a spurt in prices.
According to President Magufuli he had asked the Indian leader to invest in motor vehicle and motorcycles assembling plants in Tanzania for India to expand footprint in the Japan dominated East Africa’s car market.
He had also interacted with ‘Solar Mamas’, a group of rural women solar engineers from different African countries who have been trained under programmes supported by India for harnessing solar energy.
The Indian leader assured us that the cooperation will always be as per our needs and priorities, a commitment we need most from the Asian economic powerhouses when we are developing our industrial sector to make the country a semi-industrial economy by 2025.
The visit of the Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi opens up further trade and investment opportunities in Tanzania and boost bilateral trade between the two countries.
However, we, in both public and private sector, need to be prepared for that which means working hard to make optimal use of opportunities that will come up.
It takes hard work to achieve what we want but this is the only way to move forward.
 Source: All Africa
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of TradeMark Africa.
