Technical assistance, high level manpower training, and ideology in Tanzania

Abstract

Despite the commendable progress of localisation since Independence the civil service is still heavily dependent upon expatriates in senior technical posts and in recent years this dependence has been growing rather than declining. This is due in part to the rapid growth in the total of government spending the 1971 level is five times that of 1961 and in part to the increasing diversity of that spending. Government has ceased to be primarily the administrative agency that it was in colonial times and is now an aggressive force in the development process. The performance of this role requires the availability of large numbers of highly skilled personnel and the demand for these has far, out stripped the available supply of qualified Tanzanians even though the latter has also been growing quite spectacularly since Independence, This paper represents an attempt to outline some of the implications of this situation and in particular to define the precise role of the expatriate economist in Tanzania - bearing in mind throughout that Tanzania is trying to build a socialist society.