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January Makamba, Tanzanian President Jakaya Kikwete’s former personal assistant and speech writer, said he will seek the ruling party’s nomination to run for leader of the East African country in elections next year.
The 40-year-old deputy minister of communication, science and technology plans to put job-creation plans, supported by income from natural-gas production, at the top of his election agenda. Kikwete, 64, must step down in 2015 after completing the two terms in office allowed under the country’s constitution.
“The country needs a new generation of leaders and I represent that,” Makamba said in an interview on Oct. 24 in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi. “In deciding to run, I had to ask if I can do this job and the answer is yes.”
Tanzania, which has East Africa’s biggest economy after Kenya, has gas reserves estimated at 50.5 trillion cubic feet, compared with 179.4 trillion cubic feet in Nigeria, sub-Saharan Africa’s largest producer. The gas was found by companies including Statoil ASA (STL) and its partner Exxon Mobil Corp. (XOM:US), and BG Group Plc (BG/) working with Ophir Energy Plc. (OPHR)
It also ranks as one of the continent’s biggest gold producers and has deposits of minerals including diamonds and tanzanite. Growth is forecast to accelerate to 7.2 percent this year from 7 percent last year, according to the International Monetary Fund.
Jobs Struggle
Still, the country is struggling to find jobs for the world’s 10th largest youth population, with 54 percent of the unemployed workforce under the age of 25, according to Restless Development, a London-based non-governmental organization.
The son of a former secretary general of the ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi party, or CCM, Makamba will have to beat contenders who have all been in Tanzanian politics longer than he has for the party nomination, said Ahmed Salim, senior analyst at Teneo Intelligence in Dubai.
Former Prime Minister Edward Lowassa has been seen as a front-runner for a long time, according to Salim. Current Premier Mizengo Pinda, Foreign Minister Bernard Membe, Minister for East African Affairs Samuel Sitta, Minister of State for Social Relations and Coordination Stephen Wasira and former Mines Minister William Ngeleja have also expressed interest in the job, he said.
“January’s political career has sky-rocketed quite rapidly and he does have a lot of support in his constituency as well as within the party leadership,” Salim said.
Makamba Focus
Makamba said he’ll focus on creating employment with plans including restarting 11 idled textile factories and making greater use of the country’s cotton crop, which ranks as Africa’s fourth-biggest by output.
“We will seek to introduce a jobs bill requiring about $2 billion,” Makamba said. “We will also find a way of using the new gas money to help with this.”
CCM was created when the Tanganyika African National Union and Afro-Shirazi Party merged in 1977 under former President Julius Nyerere with a socialist ideology. It’s won every election since the first multiparty contest in 1995.
Under its three-level selection criteria, the 32-member central committee names five candidates and forwards them to the 370-member national executive committee, which reduces the list to three.
Presidential Candidate
The national congress, the party’s biggest decision-making body, will elect the party’s presidential candidate from the NEC’s three nominees by May, according to Makamba.
“Despite a vibrant opposition party that created some real tremors and headwind in 2010, the most important election in 2015 will be within the CCM,” Salim said. The main opposition party, Chama Cha Demokrasia Na Maendeleo, Swahili for Party for Democracy and Progress, led by former presidential candidate Wilbrod Slaa, has yet to announce its candidate for the elections.
Makamba spent part of his youth in a Tanzanian village that had no electricity or running water. Outside of school, he herded goats and helped his grandmother serve traditional beer at her village bar.
Inspired by helping manage a refugee camp in Tanzania, he took peace and conflict studies at St. Johnâs University in Minnesota, where he worked as a security guard and delivered pizzas to supplement scholarship money. He later served as a research assistant at the Carter Center in Atlanta, before obtaining a Master of Science degree in conflict analysis and resolution at George Mason University in Virginia.
New Constitution
Tanzania plans to vote in April on a proposed new constitution, under which more autonomy will be extended to the Indian Ocean island Zanzibar, which formed a political union with the mainland 50 years ago. The general election is planned for October.
Chadema and three other opposition parties including Civic United Front, National Convention for Construction and Reform-Mageuzi, and the National League for Democracy yesterday signed an agreement to conduct a joint campaign against the proposed constitution in the referendum, and field one presidential candidate, Dar es Salaam-based Citizen newspaper reported today.
Opposition lawmaker Zitto Kabwe confirmed the agreement via Twitter message, but referred further inquiries to the spokesman of the coalition.
To contact the reporter on this story: David Malingha Doya in Nairobi at [email protected]
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Alastair Reed at [email protected] Paul Richardson, Antony Sguazzin
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