I had the
pleasure of visiting Mwanza during my monitoring trip to North-South
cooperation projects in Tanzania in May 2014. Mwanza is indeed a rather clean
and green city although there are challenges in providing the infrastructure for
the rapidly increasing population. However, compared to the megacity of Dar es
Salaam those challenges seem to be within manageable.
I was
particularly interested in the municipal exchange as I had read about it in
Tampere-Mwanza project application here at the Association of Finnish Local and
Regional Authorities (AFLRA) where I work as a Programme Officer. I managed to
meet teachers and head teachers, academic officer, Head of Urban Planning and
agricultural officer who had benefited from this exchange either in Mwanza or
in Tampere.
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| Meeting with the project personnel; project coordinator, 2 trainees and the PST chair |
It seemed that the academic exchange, despite the demanding practical arrangements, is exactly the kind of cooperation that AFLRA wishes to support through the North-South Local Government Cooperation Programme. It can increase the practical skills and know-how of individual local government employees, but through them it can benefit a much wider group of professionals, be it in education, agriculture or urban planning, just to give a few examples. Naturally it requires a special effort to ensure that the new skills and ideas are shared among all those who cannot personally participate in municipal exchange. The academic officer Omari Kwesiga’s idea to bring all head teachers together to hear about the lessons learnt in Finland was a good example in this regard.
I also
managed to visit two project schools, accompanied by Tampere-Mwanza project’s
trainees Monica and Olu. I think it is global education in itself for many
people in Mwanza that trainees from Finland are and appear as African as
Tanzanians! We exchanged ideas and experiences fluently in English, Finnish and
Swahili. The value of trainees was particularly commended by the project
representatives Amin Abdallah and Joseph Mlinzi. Once again, here lies a
potential for a truly win-win situation where a trainee gains as much as he/she
contributes.
The project
schools were involved in composting activities and Monica seemed to play a
significant part in supporting and guiding them in this. The pupils were
clearly enthusiastic about the composting, apparently thanks to Monica’s own
enthusiasm. I was particularly happy to hear about the spreading of composting
as a practice also to local households, as I was told by Agricultural Officer
Philip Mkama. In a city as large as Mwanza waste management is a huge challenge
and relates not only to environment but also to safety, security, health and
comfort in people’s own neighbourhoods. Tampere-Mwanza project cannot compost
all the waste in Mwanza but it can spread the skills, enthusiasm and knowledge
about the benefits of composting of biowaste eventually as to as many residents
and residential areas as possible.
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| Visiting project schools and observing the composting activity |
I would
like to express my sincere thanks to all those hospitable people I met during
my short to visit to Mwanza. And thanks to my previous experiences in Tanzania,
including Swahili skills, I managed to arrange all the meetings and movements
although my host Mr. Abdallah had to leave to Dar es Salaam to prepare himself
and several others for a trip to…where else than Tampere!
Text and pictures: Ms Julia Jänis, AFLRA
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