The Mkapa Years: Collected Speeches

A three-volume collection of speeches by Benjamin William Mkapa, President of Tanzania’s Third Phase Government (1995-2005), compiled by Ombeni Sefue. The collection serves primarily as a reference record of the vision Mkapa attempted to achieve in his ten years of leadership. His tenure came at a time when Tanzania’s economy was in dire condition: the legacy of the command economy of the 1970s and 1980s was still felt, and there was resistance to adopting a market economy, evident in political tensions about privatisation and Structural Adjustment Programmes. Mkapa’s bold early steps did not immediately endear him to the public, but in the ensuing years positive results emerged, and the social cost of change came to be appreciated. Relations with development partners and multilateral agencies were restored, and Tanzania received the largest debt relief ever. The collected speeches tell this story in prose laced with wit and quotations from world political and literary sources, evidence of Mkapa’s erudition as a former literature student and journalist.