Shockingly, CCM is embarking on erecting a state of art headquarters at a time youth unemployment is surging and there is no let up. If you had paid attention to the rhetoric justifying razing over Tshs 34 Bill aims to win hearts and minds of Tanzanians!
The imposing buildings, once in place, will wage a psychological warfare of CCM invincibility and resilience. It is a misdiagnosis of real problems and solutions. As a result, CCM is introducing a couple of delusions that divorce even her own members.
Imposing buildings cannot win the hearts and minds of millions of hungry youth desperately in search of decent paying jobs. This article investigates alternative use of the funds that could have gone a long distance to address youth unemployment and will also address issues of over-invoicing that will ultimately gazump estimated costs of construction.
Based on the principle of optimal resource allocation in public governance, the Tshs 34 billion earmarked for a redundant headquarters could be strategically redirected toward higher-impact sectors. Drawing from evidence in African urban development and public health research, the following alternatives would yield substantially greater societal returns:
1. Informal Settlement Upgrading & Service Delivery.
Rationale:
The ACRC research highlights that informal settlements suffer systemic service gaps due to political-economic marginalization. Targeted interventions could improve living conditions for 60-70% of urban populations.
Specific interventions:
Water/sanitation infrastructure in high-density areas.
Land tenure regularization programs.
Community-managed waste disposal systems.
Impact:
Each billion shillings invested could reach ~ 5,000 households with essential services while fostering resident-led governance models.
2. Healthcare System Strengthening.
Acute Care Infrastructure:
Stroke research indicates that early intervention can reduce disability by 30-50%. Establishing specialized stroke units with thrombolysis capabilities would save lives.
Preventive Programs:
| No. | Disease Focus. | Intervention | Cost Efficiency |
| 1.0 | Metabolic disorders. | Community screening for hypertension/diabetes. | 15x ROI in disability prevention. |
| 2.0 | Infectious diseases | Mobile HIV/TB testing units | 80% cost reduction vs. hospital care |
Evidence:
Abnormal energy metabolism studies link urban poverty with heightened disease vulnerability.
3. Youth Economic Empowerment.
Digital Skills Hubs:
Technology training centers in secondary cities.
Green Jobs Initiatives:
Solar panel installation training + startup grants.
Impact:
Could create 8,000+ sustainable livelihoods, addressing youth unemployment exceeding 25% in Tanzania.
4. Climate Resilience Investments.
Urban Flood Mitigation:
Constructing bioswales and retention ponds in flood-prone settlements.
Renewable Energy Microgrids:
Solar/wind systems for informal settlements.
Co-benefit:
Redresses energy exclusion while cutting carbon emissions by ~15,000 tons/year.
5. Participatory Governance Innovation.
Citizen Accountability Platforms:
Digital tools for budget tracking.
Community Development Funds:
Direct financing of neighborhood improvement projects.
Evidence:
ACRC findings emphasize that resident-led initiatives achieve 3x sustainability compared to top-down projects.
Comparative Impact Analysis.
| No. | Investment Option | Immediate Reach | Long-term ROI | Equity Enhancement |
| 1.0 | Headquarters construction | 200-300 users | Low (fixed asset) | Minimal | Minimal. |
| 2.0 | Informal settlement upgrade. | 50,000+ residents | High (productivity gains) | Transformative |
| 3.0 | Stroke care network. | 1.2 million catchment | Medium (reduced care burdens) | High |
A CCM “Kula bata” Mentality is driving the splurge!
CCM is divorced from reality, and her solutions assume the country is an industrialized one. We are nowhere near that but we pretend we have reached the pinnacle of prosperity! Living a lie never makes us dream achievers but delusionists.
Most CCM leaders conduct themselves as if Tanzania isn’t a nation of very few billionaires and tens of millions of beggars. It narrates why there is an obsession with high rise buildings in a country endowed with very fertile lands. The higher the building the better notwithstanding the attached tab that keeps rising as buildings skyscrape!
The way the CCM government is structured there are no deliberate efforts to invest in direct poverty alleviation but to invest in infrastructure to intimidate the electorate as this ornate investment vastly demonstrates.
With income disparities of the ratio of over 30 between the lowest paid public servant and the highest paid public servant it is a small wonder that this regime is insensitive to the plight of the poor. During the Nyerere era, the president received monthly pay of Tshs 5, 000/= while the lowest paid civil servant walked away with Tshs 380/= on a monthly basis.
That was a ratio of 13.16 between the president and the lowest paid public servant. Nobody wants to boast about today’s ratio. Every effort is taken to cloak the unpalatable truth.
The Tanzanian president’s monthly salary was claimed to be 9 million Tanzanian Shillings, which translates to approximately $4,008 USD. This salary was disclosed by President John Magufuli in 2017, and he was considered one of the lowest-paid African leaders. But was he?
However, recent salary hikes of senior public servants have been carried out quietly, enabling rumour mongers that MPs and ambassadors now earn over Tshs 16 mill per month with the salary of the president a closely guarded secret! Whose interests are served when the salary of the lowest paid civil servant is in the public gallery but of the top public earners are in the closet?
It’s not possible to determine the exact salary of a Tanzanian minister or president or an MP from the information provided in the budget. The budget discusses the overall budget for various ministries and sectors, but do not specify individual salaries.
There is a nefarious intention to obscure earnings of top public servants because the salary hikes are a national ignominy. Kenyan budget is more transparent than Tanzania’s confirming our worst fears: the bulky of the recurrent budget is eaten by our leaders leaving the nation with peanuts to economically empower the very poor.
The rumoured MP salary of Tshs 16 mill a month even without factoring in the sitting allowances that stand at Tshs 650, 000/= per sitting per an MP draws a ratio of 32 from a lowest paid civil servant. This ratio is roughly 2.5 times of the ratio that prevailed during Nyerere years of governance. This excludes the new perks for spousal salaries of national leaders which are a portion of the incumbents. When that is incorporated in the equation the ratio between the highest paid public servant and the lowest paid one will definitely exceed 40 times.
3. Additional Benefits:
The president receives non-monetary benefits, including:
Official residence and transportation.
Comprehensive security.
Coverage of official expenses (e.g., children’s education).
These perks are standard for heads of state but are not monetized as part of the base salary.
Historical Transparency:
Magufuli publicly disclosed his salary to emphasize fiscal responsibility amid poverty reduction efforts (12 million Tanzanians live on <$0.60/day). President Samia has not disclosed her salary fuelling concerns the recent parliamentary hikes has also benefited her too distorting her focus on economic prudence.
While Magufuli declared in public a salary of Tshs 9 mill a month but critics claimed his salary was by then Tshs 48 mill a month. Lack of budgetary transparency of actual salaries of public servants have made official declarations of those salaries ineffective, – Only successful in stoking conspiracy theories but nothing tangible.
Criticism and Public Perception:
Some Tanzanians argue the salary is still excessive given state-covered benefits and lack of transparency.
Additional Benefits for MPs.
Annual allowances (fuel, constituency, office assistance, etc.) total TZS 92.4 million per MP, significantly exceeding their base salary.
Tax exemptions:
MPs pay no income tax on salaries or allowances.
Public sector allocation:
Salaries consume 24% (TZS 11.77 trillion) of Tanzania’s national budget.
Key Observations.
Parliamentary salaries are pegged to ministerial scales (not the minimum wage) spiralling income disparities in the country. Increases for senior officials (1.1%–2.8%) were modest compared to the 35.1% rise for low-wage public workers. However, real figures may reveal a different story well hidden from public scrutiny.
Wanton income disparities have insulated national leaders.
Income disparities have shielded senior public servants from understanding the economic plight facing the poor. As a result, most of their policy initiatives have been insensitive to the struggles facing the downtrodden.
As a result, emphasis has been in allocating resources into white elephants such as behemoth buildings that have no correlation to uprooting the poor from poverty. Poverty alleviation efforts such as those under TASAF have become a laughing stock enriching public servants at the expense of the real poor! Nobody cares that the poor are getting poorer while those empowered to pull them out of the vicious cycle of poverty are helping themselves at their expense.
Tanzania is poor but public leaders are fifthly rich!
Here’s a detailed breakdown of Tanzanians living on less than $1 per day:
1. Precise Monetary Threshold.
Tanzania’s “basic needs poverty line” is defined as $0.96 per day (approximately 2,200 Tanzanian shillings in 2024) .
2. Population Proportion.
Approximately one-third (33–34%) of Tanzania’s population lives below this basic needs poverty line . This translates to:
20–22 million people (using 2024 population estimates of 61–65 million).
3. Historical Context and Trends.
Poverty rates have declined slowly:
1992: 39% below the basic needs line.
2012: 28% below the basic needs line .
2018: 26.4% below the national poverty line (slightly higher than the basic needs line).
However, population growth (nearly 3% annually) has kept absolute numbers high. From 1992–2012, the population in extreme poverty remained stagnant at 11–12 million despite percentage declines.
4. Rural Disparities.
Rural areas bear the heaviest burden:
37.6% of rural Tanzanians live below the basic needs line vs. 16.6% in cities like Dar es Salaam.
Rural households face greater vulnerability due to rain-fed subsistence farming, which employs 76% of the rural poor.
5. Data Limitations.
Recent standardized metrics (e.g., World Bank’s $2.15/day line) show 26.4% poverty** (26.1 million people) in 2018.
The COVID-19 pandemic pushed an additional 3 million into poverty by 2020.
The $1/day figure relies on older surveys; newer data focuses on multidimensional poverty (e.g., access to water, sanitation).
Around 14 million people live below the national poverty line of 21 US dollars per month. Rural areas, young people, and households headed by women are particularly affected by poverty.
Key Insight
While Tanzania reduced relative poverty rates, population growth and climate shocks have kept absolute numbers dire. Extreme poverty remains entrenched in rural economies, demanding targeted agricultural and infrastructure investments.
Brazenly, CCM is asking all and sundry to squeeze themselves and accept to be more poor in order to contribute to this white elephant which nobody wants. It is a gargantuan misallocation of resources from those who really need them! This project will churn out a few more billionaires but will certainly not uplift many out of the shackles of poverty. It is CCM’s new nomenclature: manufacturing millions of abject poor in order to create a few billionaires. It is a formula now well perfected.
Conclusion:
CCM colossal expenditures on towering headquarters is another confirmation our national leaders have forgotten or no long give a hoot that this nation is extremely poor. In 1995, Nyerere reminded all that Tanzania leaders must know at heart this country is poor, and their task is to pull them out of the shackles of poverty but not to enrich themselves. This project is an insult to Nyerere’s vision of selfless leadership.
CCM has been putting up similar structures since the 1990s. The North Koreans did their thing and government subsidies did their own. Overcapacity of buildings led to CCM forcing the parliament to purchase some of the buildings excess and even Dodoma University is part of the tragic narratives. Poor planning and an emphasis in infrastructure expansion has led to these unwanted excesses.
While the initial construction costs are affixed at Tshs 34 Bill expect the costs to double to accommodate over-invoicing in the name of variation orders. It is now part of our insidious culture to mock and deride procurement acts. We are not even sure that the builder and the consultant were obtained through a competitive bidding process since nobody is even mentioning that knowing public resources are at stake in a public institution. Naysayers diss CCM is above the law and can do whatever it wishes. Tough to fault them.
Redirecting funds toward evidence-based, multidimensional poverty interventions would align with SDG principles while addressing Tanzania’s pressing developmental asymmetries. As demonstrated by urban research, the most effective investments prioritize *lived needs* over symbolic infrastructure. A reallocation framework should institutionalize community participation to ensure responsiveness to localized priorities.
The more national leaders are living above the average person the more they will be alienated from the nation they lead losing qualifications to govern that nation. Symbolism replaces reality and this what is happening with this project and many others. For example, NHC was initially designed to serve the urban poor but now is focusing on empowering alien’s chokehold in the economy. We have certainly gone full cycle.
Well, it is the way the cookie crumbles!
Read more analysis by Rutashubanyuma Nestory
