An op-ed piece in The Citizen notes that Saturday’s sinking of a ferryboat off the coast of Unguja Island with the loss of almost 200 lives brings to the fore a very pertinent question: were any lessons learnt from the May 21, 1996 MV Bukoba disaster in Lake Victoria in which close to 1,000 people died? It is hard not to draw comparisons between the two incidents given that factors behind the accidents bear an uncanny resemblance.

Bernard Baha of the Land Rights Research and Resources Institute points out in the paper 'The Politics of Investment in Large Scale Agricultural Ventures' that Tanzania has always been a country in the spotlight concerning cases of land grabbing for various uses. In the recent past there has been a lot of information in both print and electronic media about land being taken for various investment purposes. Little is known about these deals between the government and foreign investment companies eyeing Tanzania as a destination for agricultural investment.

Social Media for Social Change is an intensive course for youth and volunteers that will introduce you to social media tools that drive social change. Social media includes internet-based and mobile phone tools and platforms for communications, such as Facebook and Twitter. The course will provide you with skills in how to plan and organise a basic social media communications strategy for your organisation that strengthens networking. To register or get more information about the Training, please contact Isabella Falsted at [email][email protected] or Elsie Eyakuze at [email][email protected]

ActionAid Tanzania in collaboration with the Tanzania Land Alliance (TALA) under the land Accountability Project (LAP) launched on Friday, a web-based land portal to aid in accessing information and discussion of land related issues in Tanzania. The project will also establish a system for women and the poor to access support and expose land grabbing on the internet, said a statement issued by the ActionAid.

Nearly one third of Tanzanian girls experience sexual violence before they turn 18, a Unicef survey has found. The figure among boys is 13.4 per cent, says the UN children's agency. The most common form of abuse is sexual touching, followed by attempted intercourse, it says. Unicef official Andy Brooks said the survey was the most comprehensive carried out on this issue in any country and showed the government was prepared to tackle the problem.

In a bid to break the silence around violence against children, Tanzanian authorities launched a five-year plan on 9 August to eliminate all forms of violence against children, including sexual, physical and emotional abuse. 'Levels of violence [against children] reported are high in all settings; forms of violence reported and described are equally disturbing, including being beaten, tortured, sexually assaulted and even murdered,' Sophia Simba, the Minister for community development, gender and children, said in Dar es Salaam during the launch of a survey on the subject.

An Uwezo report confirms that in Tanzania 23 per cent of teachers are not in school on any given day and when in school, teachers spend half of their time outside the classroom. As a consequence, children are only taught for two hours and four minutes a day, instead of the expected five hours.

Tanzania will no longer become a victim of the new legislation that classifies it as a source of conflict mining in Africa, following the US government' pledge to ease the restrictions. The law known as 'Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act' is aimed at improving transparency and accountability in the supply of minerals coming from the conflict zones of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Commissioner of Minerals in the Ministry of Energy and Minerals, Dr Peter Kafumu, told the 'Daily News' in an exclusive interview in Dar es Salaam on Thursday that the decision was reached recently following a special request by the government.

The Tanzanian Government has come under pressure to make public the revised version of the Constitutional Review Act 2011. Participants at a weekend meeting accused the government of being reluctant to issue the document and vowed that they would not relent in their quest to have it released. The chairman of the Constitutional Debate Forum, Mr Deus Kibamba, said the government appeared not to be ready for change, and was trying to delay the process. The country might experience chaos should the process of writing the new constitution not be transparent, he said.

The British arms and aircraft firm BAE Systems has been severely criticised by a UK parliamentary inquiry into a corruption case surrounding an air-traffic-control deal with Tanzania. MPs accused BAE of unilaterally setting up a compensation arrangement for Tanzania that was a 'complete sham'. BAE admitted to not keeping full accounting records of £8m ($12m) it paid to an agent who brokered the deal.

Following a hearing before an British immigration judge, Tanzanian gay asylum seeker Edson 'Eddy' Cosmas was released from Harmondsworth Removal Centre at 5pm and was also removed from the 'detained fast track' process. The judge's decision has not been written but a witness at the court hearing said that it was on the basis that previous immigration judiciary decisions could be regarded as possibly 'unsafe' and that more time was needed for both a psychiatrist's report as well as for an expert witness of the situation of LGBT in Tanzania to be found.

In what is being hailed as a victory for conservationists and the wildlife of the Serengeti, the Tanzanian government has cancelled plans for a controversial highway that would have dissected the Serengeti National Park. According to scientists, the road would have severed the migration route of 1.5 million wildebeest and a half million other antelope and zebra, with indirect impacts, such as poaching and new development, exacerbating the situation.

A climate of non-disclosure pervades the sharing of basic school related information despite policies and pronouncements to the contrary. In a research brief titled 'Funding of Dar es Salaam Primary Schools: How accessible is school level information?', Uwazi at Twaweza shows that because of a climate of non disclosure, 80 per cent of the teachers interviewed could not correctly state the capitation grant amount entitlement per pupil, which is pegged at US$10 per year according to the Primary Education Development Programme.

The Zanzibar International Film Festival, now in its 14th year and the largest of its kind in East Africa, takes place from 18-26 June. Renowned the world over for putting African film, music, art and design at the forefront of the international scene, main events are in Stone Town, Zanzibar, with some events on Pemba Island and mainland Tanzania. See for more details.

An African gay activist, Edson 'Eddy' Cosmas, has had his first appeal for UK asylum turned down by a judge in a hearing 26 May at Harmondsworth detention centre, where he is being held. Judge S. Chana accepted the UK Border Agency (UKBA)'s argument that Cosmas's story was not 'credible' and that he has no reason to fear persecution in Tanzania even if he was gay, which he isn't. A lawyer for Cosmas, who had only been instructed for the case the previous night, asked for the case to be removed from the 'fast track process' so a psychological and physical assessment (to establish whether he had been tortured) could take place. This was refused.

Tanzania’s foreign affairs minister, Bernard Membe, is up in arms over the decision by BAE Systems to pay 29.5-million pounds in settlement of the controversial sale of a radar system. He told a press conference in Dar es Salaam that apart from the decision being unfair, the British company’s move was aimed at tarnishing the image of the Tanzania government before the international community. He warned that if BAE Systems went ahead and paid the money to a charity organisation, such an organisation would not be allowed to operate in Tanzania.

Since 2002, the Government of Tanzania has been implementing the Primary Education Development Programme (PEDP) with two specific aims: making education more accessible and improving its quality. While significant success has been made in extending access, improving quality remains a challenge, says a May 2011 brief from Uwazi monitoring. 'This brief is the second in a series about the quality of public schools in Dar es Salaam. The results show that many public schools in Dar es Salaam lack proper playgrounds and face debilitating sanitary conditions.'

While the burning of shops in Zanzibar is being interpreted as a criminal and political act, ‘nobody has asked where the root of the problem may lie in the economic and social sphere,’ says Abdul Sheriff.

http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/530/contaminated_water_tmb.jpg… Moloo investigates the impact of a Canadian-based gold mine on the North Mara region in Tanzania. Villagers in the area complain about deaths and ill-health due to pollution of the Thigithe River.

The Prevention and Combating of Corruption Bureau (PCCB) has bowed to the pressure by donors and Monday (16 May) released a much awaited National Governance and Corruption Survey report. The report shows generally that corruption is still a serious problem in the country, with respondents listing the police force, judiciary and education sectors as areas which they perceive to be the most corrupt in the country.