Do you feel embarrassed about Tanzania sometimes (a rant about institutions)
Hello everyone,
I’m in the mood for a rant today, but I’d rather turn it into a productive discussion.
Do any of you ever feel embarrassed about Tanzania? I do sometimes, and a large part of it comes from the feeling that we live in a half-built society.
By that, I don’t mean Tanzania has no institutions. We obviously do: schools, universities, courts, ministries, companies, media houses, political parties, etc. What I mean is that very few of our institutions consistently produce excellence.
A real institution is not just a building or an organisation. It is a system of standards, culture, incentives, and competence that reproduces quality over generations.
Think about institutions elsewhere:
- universities like Harvard or Oxford
- the scientific and cultural institutions the Soviet Union built
- South Korea’s industrial bureaucracy
- Japan’s manufacturing culture
These institutions produce world-class engineers, artists, intellectuals, athletes, scientists, and administrators year after year.
Now compare that to Tanzania.
We have universities, but how many are genuinely respected globally for research or intellectual production? We have cities, but how many feel carefully planned, functional, or ambitious? We have political institutions, but how many people truly trust them? Even many of our elite spaces rely heavily on imported systems.
I went to international schools for part of my education, and even there I noticed something uncomfortable: the curriculum was foreign, the standards were foreign, many of the administrators and teachers were foreign, and often the environments themselves barely felt Tanzanian. Some of the highest-quality institutions operating in Tanzania do not even feel like they were built by Tanzanians.
And that bothers me deeply.
Why must so many ambitious Tanzanians leave the country for serious higher education, research opportunities, specialised healthcare, or professional development? Why does excellence so often feel imported?
This applies beyond education. Our infrastructure, urban planning, research culture, public transport, sporting systems, archives, museums, and even many cultural institutions often feel underdeveloped relative to the size and potential of the country.
Tanzania has nearly 70 million people and enormous geographic and natural advantages. Yet it often feels like we survive off potential rather than achievement.
And before people mention our mountains, wildlife, beaches, or natural beauty: those things are blessings, yes, but they are not institutions. We did not create Kilimanjaro or the Serengeti. A society should also be judged by what it builds: its systems, standards, knowledge, culture, and capacity for excellence.
Maybe I’m being too harsh, but I genuinely want to know:
What institutions in Tanzania today consistently produce excellence?