A Tanzanian fashion model, now well known on the catwalks of Europe, has set up a fund to raise money for AIDS projects in Namibia. The Tausi AIDS Trust Fund, named after its model founder Tausi Likokola, was launched in Windhoek at a luncheon attended by leaders of the local business community. Like many AIDS funds, the Tausi AIDS fund will aim mainly at tapping from "corporate social responsibility" budgets of companies.

Times are changing and, in one respect, the Maasai are changing too. Before, the Masaai warriors would look after their herds of cattle, but now many of them have to go into urban areas to work and earn money. They often take with them their attitude towards sex. The Maasai culture of sharing wives may still pose a potential threat and encourage the spread of HIV/AIDS, but despite their deep-rooted traditions, the Maasai have acknowledged the new challenge, and do seem prepared to adapt.

Some 1.6 million of the 4.7 million children in Tanzania are labourers, according to the country's latest labour force survey. A majority of the children, between five and 17 years worked for more than four hours a day and were not attending school due to poverty, according to the "Integrated Labour Force Survey 2000/01".

The littered, dusty street could hardly be described as teeming with activity, but unlike most streets in refugee camps in Western Tanzania, which are often characterised by a sense of hopelessness imposed by years of waiting to return home, the unnamed street between residential villages 1 and 5 of Lugufu 1 refugee camp was definitely alive. On its right hand side stood an impressive array of hairdressing establishments, with "Salon Las Vegas" and "Le Don de Dieu" selling themselves as a cut above the rest. Intermingled and sometimes hidden behind the saloons were artisans of various kinds. This seemed to be the area for carpenters and tailors.

In early March this year, over 2,300 Rwandans arrived at the Kibungo transit camp, a centre that receives Rwandan refugees returning from Tanzania. These were not the usual refugees. They were Rwandans living within the local community near the border and had never been in the camps. When the governments of Rwanda and Tanzania had signed an agreement to repatriate all Rwandan nationals living in Tanzania as refugees, these people had not considered themselves part of the target group. Over several weeks in early March, they had been identified and evicted as illegal immigrants. "Most of them left Rwanda in the 1980's, some of them were born there [Tanzania]," Odette Nyiramirimo, the Secretary of State for Social Affairs in the Ministry of Local Administration told Internews.

Tanzania is to start using nuclear power, after the country's parliament enacted a law last week permitting the use of uranium to produce energy. The move could make Tanzania the first country in East and Central Africa to use nuclear technology to generate electricity.

In a small, poorly lit classroom in Mtendeli refugee camp, western Tanzania, 20 Burundian and Tanzanian clinicians, midwives and HIV counsellors were on the final day of a three-day training course. They had been discussing HIV/AIDS and antenatal care, practising their counselling skills and learning about the pharmacology of anti-retroviral (ARV) drugs.

The Editor of weekly "Dira" newspaper in the semi-autonomous state of Zanzibar Ali Nabwa has vehemently refuted government charges that he is not a citizen of Tanzania and that he has been living illegally in the country since 1993.

The chairman of the Democratic Party (DP), Reverend Christopher Mtikila, says he cannot be sued for his allegations of corruption against Prime Minister Frederick Sumaye and others unless the premier is first brought before a court of law on criminal charges.

April brought the end of the rainy season in western Tanzania, where approximately 500,000 refugees from Rwanda, Burundi and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) live in refugee camps. It also brought a slight reprieve from the malaria that accompanied the rains and badly affected the refugees. Thanks to effective drugs, health workers said case fatalities were relatively low, but at the peak of the rains, malaria filled paediatric wards, drained precious health resources and affected pregnant women. Poverty and a lack of awareness in the camps led to preventative methods failing.

A curfew imposed a month ago after several nights of violence in two Burundian refugee camps in western Tanzania continues, IRIN learnt on Thursday. Calm has returned to the Mtabila and Myovosi refugee camps, near Kasulu, but the 20:00 to 06:00 local time curfew imposed by the Tanzanian authorities is still in place.

There are two opposing views on corruption in Tanzania. Some observers, including former anti-corruption Commissioner Joseph Warioba and global watchdog Transparency International (TI), see endemic official corruption in the country as an abuse of human rights and a major factor undermining the country's development prospects. Others, including many senior government officials, take the view that corruption is not a fundamental problem and that Tanzania's poor image – last year, Transparency International ranked it among the four most corrupt in a poll of 85 countries – reflects the more "widespread and open discussion" of corruption in Tanzania.

In Burundi the first period of a three-year transitional government is drawing to an end. Under the terms of the peace agreement to end the civil war, presidential powers are to be transfered from a Tutsi to a Hutu on 1 May. But speculation among analysts and commentators over what the future holds for Burundi is rife. Aid agencies in western Tanzania and some Burundians are not relying on a smooth transition of power. They believe that waiting till the day will be too risky. The result is that refugee numbers have been mounting steadily and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has put in place a contingency plan to deal with a fresh influx.

A new study from Canadian researchers examines the World Bank's influence in establishing mining codes in Southern countries. It finds that the Bank's assessment of what was needed to attract foreign investment did not consider broader development objectives.

The severely depleted food rations of refugees living in camps in Western Tanzania are to be increased slightly by mid-April, the World Food Programme announced. Aid agencies in the west of the country welcomed the 16 percent rise in caloric value of the rations, but refugees and local officials continued to voice their concerns over the lack of food in the camps.

Tanzania will soon have a permanent voters' register, which may be used in the country's next general election in 2005. The Director of Elections of the country's National Electoral Commission (NEC), Rajab Kiravu, said in Dar es Salaam this week that the register would be ready by November
2004.

Malaria costs Tanzania $120-million (R960-million) in treatment expenses and lost man-hours every year, Health Minister Anna Abdallah said on Wednesday. "The loss is equivalent to 3,5 percent of the east African country's gross domestic product and is manifested in terms of spending in treating the disease and lost man-hours due to illness," she added.

In the Shinyanga region of west central Tanzania, one of the poorest in the country, small-scale mining at Bulyanhulu once offered rural people an income about 6 times what they could make from farming. But in August of 1996, less than a year after President Benjamin W. Mkapa took office, that changed. According to eyewitness reports, affidavits, photographs, and even video by Tanzanian police, and in violation of an injunction from the High Court of Tanzania, eight entire settlements around the town of Kakola were razed, an estimated 200,000 miners or more were evicted from the mines, and in the process some 54 miners at Bulyanhulu were buried alive in mineshafts sealed by bulldozers. By July of 2001, the mine, now revamped as a huge high-tech operation, was officially opened with great fanfare by President Mkapa.

Tanzanian President Benjamin Mkapa called on government leaders on Tuesday to increase transparency and to avoid hindering the media's attempts to disseminate information to the public.

The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) began the integration of more than 3, 300 Somali Bantu refugees into the local community in Tanzania, the UN agency reported. UN High Commissioner for Refugees reported that the Somali Bantus fled to Tanzania in 1991 and 1992 following civil war and the collapse of the Siyad Barre government in Somalia. This group was among "tens of thousands" of Somalis who "travelled on overcrowded and rickety dhows to Kenya's coastal town of Mombasa", it said.