Regional News

..nimeona habari hii toka Liwale-Nachingwea.

..very interesting kujua nini kinaendelea Southern Tanzania.

 
A most interestingly original post from a distinguished member. Although that comment about Mtwara lacking educated people, apart from being unnecessarily cryptic and unwarrantedly provocative, was incosiderately unfortunate, even under the veil of brutal honesty.

I should like to analyze this issue from a different perspective.It is possible to catalyze development by using the media, but it is easier to develop a region either simultaneously with the development of it's media, or before the development of it's media.

For me, an economic backward region is not a viable market for media businesspeople and more than that, even humanitarian / grassroot efforts and NGOs may end up frustrated by the prevailing economic conditions.How can you tell a mother to sit down and read while she has to walk 20 km to fetch water or firewood?

The lack of regional newsparer/ media outlets is only a tip of the iceberg. The reason why places like Sumbawanga and Mtwara are hardly covered is staring us in the face, our country is disproportionately centralized, with everything in Dar, places like Moshi/ Arusha and Mwanza come a distant second, and after that you have a totally different country.The rural/ urban divide is nothing unique to Tanzania, but with the advent of globalization the common trend is the narrowing of this divide, with us it is almost like the divide is widening, with some people in Dar living like they are in Malibu, while some folks in Mpanda are moving back to the days of "Dr. Livingstone I presume".

The free market - with all the current afflictions- still follows the law of money gravity, supply will almost always go where there is demand. If there are enough development projects, enough income generating employment, enough disposable income, enough educated people, enough time for recreation and consumption of news, surely there will be a natural demand for news and the Mengis of Tanzania will quickly snap the opportunity.

Currently most of the able bodied young people from Mtwara are hustling in Dar, and the ones back in Mtwara are under a budget (primarily monetary but in some cases timewise too) which cannot afford them the "luxury" of reading.

With a few exceptions, unless you are interested in one of these do gooder's money sinkers, which would come up with a nice top down write up about starting a magazine for an uneducated- possibly uncaring too - population, simply because some idea may sound too far fetched, too top down and too removed from their reality.

When I was a primary school kid, in the height of the cold war, a lot of my friends used to go to a Russian embassy propaganda centre to collect their communism propaganda books.The Russian diplomats were very happy to see such young schoolkids interested in their propaganda books by the volumes, what they did not understand was that the young Tanzanians were only interested in the books because they were going to give the books to "Mzee mkaanga mihogo" who would then give them a few mihogo per a bundle of Russian propaganda books.At the end of that entire transaction, the carefully prepared and expensively printed Russian propaganda books ended up as some sort of paper plates for primary schoolkids who were not interested in neither Lenin nor Gromyko.

The moral of this little story down memory lane is that whatever plans are to be adopted in order to stimulate the level of media coverage and establish regional media outlets must be focused on the grassroot, must reflect the level of economy and therefore be self sustaining (no sense starting a TV station covering a radius of 200 miles while you only have 20 TVs in the entire area, it is simply uneconomic) and must come as a result of a collective elevated social consciousness that will balance in harmony with purely economic interests (you want an economic structure, you don't want a vulture to exploit people because of the possible naivette and lack of exposure).
 
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...Currently most of the able bodied young people from Mtwara are hustling in Dar, and the ones back in Mtwara are under a budget (primarily monetary but in some cases timewise too) which cannot afford them the "luxury" of reading.
The potential is right there.
Umewasahau wenyeji wa Mtwara waliohamia Dar; wao ndio watakuwa wasomaji walengwa namba moja!

Kama ambavyo imeonekana kwenye hii thread, wasio wenyeji wa Mtwara know so little about the place. Hawa wasio wenyeji wa huko, pale waendapo kusoma UK, Uchina, USA n.k., watafaidika mno kupata exposure ya Mtwara. Tena wanaihitaji kuliko aliyeko bongo.
 
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