Tanzania will have to decide what steps to take in order to receive nearly half-a-billion dollars in suspended US development aid, an official in Washington said on Friday.
“The government of Tanzania needs to determine how it will rectify the specific issues of concern,” Renee Kelly, spokeswoman for the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), wrote in an email message.
“It is up to MCC’s Board to determine if any such actions taken by the government of Tanzania are sufficient to warrant re-instatement.”
The MCC board announced on March 28 that it was suspending planning for a $473 million “compact” with Tanzania partly on the grounds that the March 20 election in Zanzibar had been conducted unfairly. The US government agency also objected to limits that Tanzanian authorities had allegedly placed on free speech and free association through the country’s Cybercrimes Act.
Ms Kelly did not respond to questions as to whether resumption of MCC assistance is predicated on Tanzania organising a new election in Zanzibar and making changes in the wording or application of the Cybercrimes Act.
“MCC does not provide checklists,” she wrote in an earlier email to The Citizen on Sunday.
At stake is a US-funded initiative intended to expand access to reliable electricity and to help Tanzania implement what MCC describes as an “ambitious plan to reform the energy sector.”
In 2012, Tanzania was deemed potentially eligible for the $473 million aid package. The country had previously received a $698 million MCC grant that financed projects in the transportation, energy and water sectors.
That initial five-year compact with Tanzania, concluded in 2013, was the largest approved by MCC since its establishment in 2004.
Tanzania’s longstanding status as a favoured recipient of US aid is thus in jeopardy as a result of the MCC board ruling earlier this week.
The agency makes its assistance to dozens of developing countries contingent on their compliance with US criteria on governance, economic policy and budget priorities. Countries that do not receive passing grades on these tests are barred from entering into MCC compacts.
Kenya, for example, has consistently failed to meet MCC standards on combating corruption and has thus never qualified for this form of development aid.
The Citizen