Tanzania’s Economy Hurt by Departure of Rwandans

In her cramped store, Sarah Kivuyo glumly surveys shelves stocked with Kellogg’s Corn Flakes, Snickers and imported wine.

Kivuyo and dozens of other Tanzania entrepreneurs had it good for 2 1/2 years. While half a million Rwandan Hutus were camped out in northwest Tanzania, shops profited handsomely from spending by foreign aid workers and cheap refugee labor.

Now the refugees and the aid workers are going, and with them Kivuyo’s windfall.

The Tanzania government, with the tacit approval of the U.N. refugee agency, began to forcibly repatriate the Rwandan Hutus on Dec. 14. By the New Year’s Eve deadline, nearly all had crossed the river border.

When the Rwandan refugees flooded into northwest Tanzania on April 28, 1994, Kivuyo opened the Neema Grocery to cater to the expatriate aid workers who followed.

She’s been selling up to $5,000 worth of goods per month to the aid workers. Now, all that looks bright in her little shop are unsold Christmas decorations.

“It is very difficult because local people don’t buy these things,” Kivuyo said, waving pink-shellacked nails at the holiday leftovers.

“I’ve been thinking of what to do, but I don’t have any answers.”

Kivuyo is not alone.

Entrepreneurs who opened eight new guest houses, families who rented out rooms for 10 times the usual rate and farmers all expect to lose business.

District Commissioner Evans Balama said he’ll miss the frenzy brought by the refugees and aid agencies, but not the headaches that included a rise in crime and trees being hacked down for firewood.

“Even myself, I feel some loneliness. It was so hectic, it will take some months to adjust,” he said.

Although anxious to be rid of the refugees, Balama said they helped bring many improvements to the remote Ngara region just across the border from Rwanda.

The U.N. high commissioner for refugees paid for major improvements to the local airport, the construction of good roads and a bridge, which are essential for trade.

“There have been so many positive impacts. Schools have been rehabilitated, and health centers and hospitals. These Rwandans are very talented with carpentry and masonry,” Balama said.

Their work came cheap too. A Rwandan contractor charged just one-quarter that of a local contractor.

Gone, too, is the refugee labor that allowed local farmers to cultivate more land than ever and sell to a huge new market. Tanzanian farmers put 40% more land into cultivation since the refugee influx.

“Farmers will be forced to use their own hands and their own hoes again. That will be a problem,” Balama said. Already, farmers are grumbling about having to milk their own cows.

Unlike Rwandan refugees in Zaire and Burundi, those in Tanzania were allowed to set up their own businesses through which they kept the local population stocked with inexpensive beer, rice and other staples. Now that they’ve left, the flow of goods has slowed and prices have risen.

Locals will also miss the night life. With plenty of leisure time, refugees opened beer joints, cinemas and libraries. The best restaurant around, favored for its roasted meats, was in Benaco Camp.

Thousands of jobs will disappear too. Aid agencies have been the major employer in the region, offering salaries three to four times higher than the local government.

The international Red Cross was the single largest employer in the region with 2,500 refugee staff, 531 Tanzanians and 20 expatriates.

“Staff will lose jobs that have been their lives, their livelihoods, and have supported their families,” said Abbas Gullet, the Red Cross’ chief delegate in Ngara.

Some will be transferred to other jobs, for example in more southern Kigoma, where thousands of refugees recently arrived from neighboring Burundi.

Peter Safari Jerome, a Red Cross radio operator, hitchhiked to the Rwanda capital of Kigali to hunt for work with a nongovernment organization.

Andrew Choto, a driver for Concern Worldwide, the Irish charity, was less optimistic. He planned to go home to Mwanza to look for work. But he knows he’s unlikely to match his monthly salary of $150 when 90% of the populace works in agriculture, mostly as subsistence farmers.

Some aid groups will stay in Ngara to work with 80,000 remaining Burundian refugees.

CARE International will continue with its environmental programs, including reforestation with seedlings such as acacias and eucalyptus. Refugees severely damaged 1,500 acres of land.

Others are working to help rebuild populations of wild animals--including giraffes, elephants, rhinos, zebra and antelopes--to restore a lucrative hunting business that thrived before the refugees came.

Not everyone is dreading the departure of the uninvited guests.

On a grease-soaked patch of dirt crowded with broken-down, four-wheel-drive vehicles, Abdeleman Samma said he doesn’t expect his garage to lose business.

“For me, it will make little difference. I’m working for other companies, the government, missionaries and NGOs [nongovernmental organizations] that will stay,” Samma said.

Mike McDonagh, country director for Concern Worldwide, said although the Dublin-based charity will leave Ngara shortly, he sees its departure as an opportunity. Of 11 expatriates now in Ngara, five will go work in Rwanda.

“We have kept a population waiting in exile for 2 1/2 years at a cost of nearly $5 billion,” he said.

“If all of that money had been spent in Rwanda before, the genocide wouldn’t have happened.”