(eTN) - While in Canada for an official state visit, Tanzania
President Kikwete found himself in a tight spot, when challenged by the
media over the hugely controversial Serengeti highway plans that his
government had floated in 2010. The road would cut the migration route
of the wildebeest towards the Kenyan Masai Mara, where his government
has steadfastly refused to open the Bologonja border post, ostensibly to
“keep the Kenyans out of the Serengeti.” Some weeks ago,
conservationists blamed Tanzanian park officials to have deliberately
created fires in the Serengeti to prevent the large herds from
completing their annual migration to the Kenyan Masai Mara, a claim
swiftly denied by SENAPA and TANAPA officials, though the fires were in
itself not disputed, only the interpretation. With the case in court at
the East African Court of Justice, where the Tanzanian government has
failed to stop the case on a variety of grounds, the road plans have
dented Tanzania’s credibility as a conservation nation, and added
equally controversial projects on Lake Natron, the Coelacanth marine
national park near Tanga. and uranium mining and a huge dam project in
the Selous are only increasing the woes.
President Kikwete’s explanations sounded as weak as mitigating pleas
normally do, especially as the alternate Southern route would reach 4
times as many people and would be financed by both the World Bank and
the German government, offers, however, not accepted by the Tanzanian
government up til now.
Critics claim that Kikwete was under pressure by contributors to his
last campaign to deliver on promises allegedly made, connecting the Lake
Natron flats and the mining concessions between the Serengeti and Lake
Victoria to a major paved road, so that new mines could be opened and a
soda ash factory established within the breeding grounds of the East
African lesser flamingos.
To make matters worse, one of his self-styled mouth pieces, a Mr.
Edward Porokwa, gave away the game when he openly spoke out against
Kenyan cattle buyers who are allegedly cheating Tanzanian livestock
sellers with artificially low prices for lack of alternate roads. Such
talk is likely to negate President Kikwete’s goodwill visit three weeks
ago to Kenya’s capital Nairobi, where he was attempting to court public
opinion and dispel constant murmurs that Tanzania’s attitude to her
neighbors was far from friendly – allegations supported by regular
non-tariff barriers being slapped on Kenyan traders and businesses.
Comparisons by Porokwa with other highways crossing national parks
were also considered a dismal failure in justifying the highway across
the Serengeti, as in Mikumi National Park where the loss of game through
road kills continues to be high and the recent experience with a new
road in Kenya between Emali and Kimana also showed a sharp increase of
game being run over by trucks, now that the road is paved.
The objections of the conservation fraternity remain, and the
Tanzanian government has done little to absorb the wave of global
opposition and seriously consider the Southern route alternative and
President Kikwete’s performance was also all but a failure to convince
the world that this particular route was needed for anything else but to
please powerful economic interest groups at the expense of tourism and
conservation.