Could you give us the main characteristics of the economic and social development of Zanzibar in the last couple of years?
Zanzibar is basically an agro-economic country, which depends mainly on agricultural commodities such as coconuts and cloves. Cloves have been on the market for the last 150 years, and in export market since 1840. In the early days Zanzibar used to be the largest world producer of cloves. After some time there were some other countries that started competing with us. So far, Zanzibar is still leading in terms of quality of cloves. Secondly we have coconut products which also occupy a certain part of the economy but the exports of coconuts have decreased due to the development of the world prices. In the early 70's clove reached its highest price of 9000 USD per ton, over 9 USD per kilo. Around that time Zanzibar was one of the richest countries in Africa. Now prices have fallen down. From 1980 until 1990 prices decreased to about 10% from what they used to be. Since we were dependent on these agricultural products, we had to define new areas to boost the economy. Nowadays tourism plays a large role in economic development. We are doing quite well in tourism and it is revamping our economy. There is a tourist area we are developing which is called the east coast, which is a belt of hotels. We also want to develop the industry sector more in the future.
Are there any other up-coming sectors you want to promote and develop?
There are a number of areas. We want to have full use of the sea. Most of the fish we catch is accommodating the coastal areas and they are not fully utilised. We only fish 10% of what we should catch. The reef sea fishing is totally untouched in Zanzibar. There are some foreign ships and companies which try to catch some fish outside the Zanzibar coastal areas, but so far we don't make full use of the fishing industry in Zanzibar. We try to develop this area further in the future and make use of the huge potential this industry offers. If you consider the geographical position of Zanzibar, there is also a big potential for the domestic market and even for exports to East African countries. We established two zones, one here in Zanzibar and one in Pemba. Our intention in these Export Processing Zones is that they should entertain some industries from overseas, offer them tax holidays and other advantages. We have established about 10 square kilometres in Zanzibar and about the same size in Pemba. Once these two areas take off, I am sure they can contribute a lot to our exports and the economy. These areas, agriculture, fishing, tourism and industries will play a key role in the economy of Zanzibar.
In order to revamp the economy foreign investment is needed. What initiative are you taking in order to promote and support foreign investment?
We established offices which take care of this. We have ZIPA, Zanzibar Investment Promotion Agency and the other one is ZAFREZA, Zanzibar Free Zone Authority. These institutions have established special guidelines in order to promote and attract more foreign investors. They also provide information to these potential investors.
Infrastructure is a vehicle to economic growth. Can you tell us about major infrastructure projects here in Zanzibar in terms of road, sea, air but also telecom and energy?
Our road network was once one of the best in East Africa. Due to economic problems, it became the worst in East Africa. We are trying our best to improve it and in the past few years we have been trying to rebuild all our roads and so far we have been quite successful in rehabilitating the major highways in Zanzibar and Pemba. Our intention is to repair all the roads in the most successful manner so that our economy can grow. We are also doing a lot in housing. We are building houses for the people. We call them low scrapers. They are low as supposed to the high sky scrapers in big cities in the US. We rent them at a very low rate. Our intention is to build more houses once our economy recovers. We intend to serve the people as good as we can. We want to keep the lifestyle of the people in the city and the villages. We don't want major differences between lifestyle in the city and in the villages. We also try to supply water all over the country and we try to supply power, so that every village in Zanzibar and Pemba can benefit from electricity and clean water in every district of the island. We want to improve our education standards and health care by introducing more schools and health care centres. We believe once all these aspects are put in place, we can make a huge difference. There are also new private schools which have been established.
| One of your objectives is to turn Zanzibar into a Free Economic Zone which aims for increase of trade here in Zanzibar. What are your trade relationships with Asia, the USA and Europe?
As far as the agro commodities are concerned, we used to export cloves to Europe, the USA, India, the Far East and Asia. These exports have decreased in the past years. With our EPZ, Economic Processing Zone we are now trying to enter into new markets to sell our local products. We are targeting countries in the Gulf and Europe. So far our relationships with Europe and America are limited, but we are working on that. We also believe that we have a very competitive labour force and that is why foreign producer could be interested to produce here and to export to European or American markets.
What are the main aspects that you are working on in order to make Zanzibar more attractive for foreign investment?
Our housing is still not very good. We have to build more houses and we are planning to reconstruct our entire city ,Stone Town. As far as health care is concerned, we have a lack of health centres and we want to introduce more of them in order to make Zanzibar one of the health centres of this region. In terms of communication, we have been able to establish a communication network last year with the launch of Zantel, a mobile phone company. We want to make Zanzibar one of the communication hubs of this region. In history, Zanzibar used to be a hub of communication for the whole of Africa and we want to become a hub again in the future.
This year is a special year for Zanzibar since you have elections. You have been president for about 10 years and you have served your second term. If you could, would run again for president?
We have a constitution here that defines 2 terms for presidency and I have already served my two terms.
If the oppositions will come to power, what do you think will be the effects on the economic and social development of Zanzibar?
If somebody wants to continue with the same ideas to sustain our economic and social developments, he will be successful. For those who may think that they just need to hold a seat of power only for the sake of holding it without having any vision or objectives for the people to improve their quality of life, they may not succeed.
What has been your biggest achievement as the president of Zanzibar?
I think that people can tell what has been done. What I can say is that I worked along with the people in this country with my government to achieve what we have today. So far we have moved from below zero to plus zero. There was a time when the entire road network was in a very bad state. A lot has been achieved in road infrastructure but we are still working on it and we will continue to work on it. We also have achieved a lot in telecommunications and with our new technology our people are able to call to any place in the world.
What would be your final message to our readers who are top business people and potential investors?
Now it is time for people from America, Asia, Latin America and Europe to look at Zanzibar as an investment destination. The world has become a global village for all of us to live together. Africa has become a very important and rich continent with a big population and huge resources. Africa has been left alone for a long time but the potential it offers is significant. Zanzibar which has played a very important role in the history of the world, needs support from other countries to take off again. Any investor is welcome to come to Zanzibar and have a look what we can offer. We are trying to create an investment friendly environment through the incentives offered through ZIPA. Two other aspects that make Zanzibar attractive are the friendliness of our people and the peace we have in this country. We are rich in resources but we have a lack of technology, so once we get the technology we will be able to exploit our resources. |
