Update IV: A Positive Legacy from Colonial Tanzania?

In 1915, the German war effort temporarily came to Tanzania and a ‘battleship’ (built in 1913) was transported overland to help the ‘fatherland’ maintain control of its East African colony. 100 years later, we found ourselves at the pictureseque lakeside port of Kigoma, competing with a plethora of local traders to load ourselves and our bicycles onto the same ship. This eccentric relic from the colonial era kept us entertained for 48 hours and saved us 10 likely gruelling days of cycling the only (dirt) road to Zambia. More importantly, it plays a vital role in the local economy.

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Update III: Rwanda to Tanzania

As I highlighted in my last blog, the aid debate is probably the most contentious issue surrounding African development, highlighted by the recent spat between Bill Gates and Dambisya Moyo. Since then, we’ve travelled through Rwanda into the DRC and are now in Tanzania. All three countries have been recipients of vast sums of overseas aid and I’ve met and spoken with many stakeholders, including several people asking me for money. On a macro level, meanwhile, the UK has been leading the way in meeting the UN commitment for countries to spend 0.7% of their gross national income (GNI) on official development assistance (ODA).

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Update II: Introducing Dutch Disease in Uganda

We finished our European cycle in Amsterdam, capital of the Netherlands, a city with a rich economic history built around strong trade links over the centuries. One concept famously associated with Europe’s 5th largest economy is the dreaded ‘Dutch Disease’, coined by the Economist newspaper in 1977 to describe the negative impact of the discovery, in 1959, of natural gas reserves on the rest of the economy. I flew from Amsterdam to Uganda and started the African leg of the Economic Cycle in Kampala with a visit to Makerere University. Here I met with two budding economists to discuss whether Dutch disease was a threat to Uganda as well as other challenges for African policy makers.

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Update I: A Journey to the Heart of the EU from London…

After leaving London and the UK, although France is officially the second country that we cycled through, less than 20kms and barely an hour of pedalling under a grey sky on Sunday morning didn’t really justify a full blog. We crossed the border into Belgium just east of Dunkirk, (in)famous for the British retreat in 1940, entering the country from which the EU policies are formulated. Ironic perhaps that the country at the heart of the European Union is itself clearly divided, holding the current world record for a being without a government, previously held by war-torn Iraq.

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