A lost opportunity to reform Tanzania

TANZANIA’S PRESIDENTCCM is undoubtedly an improvement on her ghastly predecessor. John Magufuli was an abrasive, covid-denying nativist who crushed dissent, chilled investment and frittered away money on vanity projects. Samia Suluhu Hassan, by contrast, is a conciliatory internationalist who has wooed foreign investors and who prefers negotiating with her opponents to locking them up. Yet three years into her presidency, as words fail to translate into action and reforms stall, nostalgia for the Magufuli era is growing.As a hijab-wearing Muslim woman from the politically marginalised archipelago of Zanzibar, Mrs Samia has had plenty of prejudices to overcome. Before becoming president she was an inconsequential figure within the ruling party, which has governed Tanzania since independence from Britain in 1961. She was the choice of neither her party nor her predecessor, whom she served as vice-president, a position that owed more to tokenism than anything else. When Mr Magufuli died in March 2021, she assumed the presidency by virtue of the constitution.