SOME more good news were being heard from the port of Dar es Salaam late last week, that ship handling improvements and enhanced efficiency at the port has caught the attention of three global metal giants, now exploring opportunities to expand their operations in Africa. It cements the feeling that Dar is emerging as a key trade hub, with senior port officials citing the China Metal Storage and Transport Company (CMST), Mercuria Corporation and its subsidiary Henry Bath & Son Ltd as showing that interest. Top executives of those firms were at hand to underline precisely the same feeling, which lights up then path for still more companies, surely.

They key point of attraction is undeniably the sort of efficiency that has been realised at the port chiefly from its partnership with DP World, which shall be engaged with the giant shippers in its own right rather than as a partner with the port authorities. There are guarantees or assurances that will be needed in that regard where TPA role will be crucial, as engaging with the port partner firms is better than engaging with the government, as TPA stands for its interests. The issue is how far this strategic location, for the entire coastline from Mtwara to Tanga in passing by Zanzibar, can actually become a special economic zone where companies may come in and settle.

Surprisingly, it is from China where the most relevant model comes up, but it was nowhere on the table in the series of Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) the last such meeting being held last August. When President Samia Suluhu Hassan visited China late 2023 there were discussions on strategic partnership that in a sense extends to other Frontline States, now in the course of rejuvenating the old alliance into substantial accords of cooperation. The key point there is the Chinese political model, and its impact may already be visible, while the more usable dimension would be China’s 1978 Four Modernisations and ‘one country, two systems’ method.

China moved from a poor country to a leading economic power not primarily due to its political system but rather the way in which the political system was used to supervise and oversee all-round modernization.  The coastal zone was declared to be a special area where Chinese nationals could form joint ventures with foreign nationals after purchasing the land, while in the countryside foreign companies or overseas Chinese could form joint ownership of land with area cooperatives instead of buying the land outright. They similarly prospered even if it is the coastal zones which largely have the upper hand in distribution of investment fortunes in that country,

The reason for this comparison is that most of the coastal area is being earmarked for urban expansion, industrial parks and not vast trading space and if the land regime was more accommodating, plenty of other industrial or real estate developers could come in. Often interest is expressed and some memorandums even signed, but soon the going proves tough as the benefits of holding land are far less than optimal, whereas firms holding domiciled land could obtain loans from international banks operating here. Their imprint on growth is far more limited than would otherwise be the case if we had Chinese economic policies, not the political model, to apply here as well