The Prime Minister in Your Class
Suerie Moon
Issue date: 10/25/06 Section: KSG News
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Last fall when Frederick Sumaye, former Prime Minister of Tanzania, came to Harvard for a UN agency conference, he arrived with the pomp, circumstance and security detail normally accorded to a visiting head of state. This year Sumaye quietly returned as a mid-career student, eager to absorb the ideas of KSG's development gurus and to share some of the lessons he learned as a world leader.
"I have been in politics for 20 years, ten of those as prime minister. So, after this lonely, sort of tiring job, I decided that I really needed to go somewhere and disengage myself from local politics for a while," Sumaye said. "I didn't want to go and stay somewhere, just resting doing nothing, so I thought, let me find a place where I can also get the benefit of exchanging ideas with other people but at the same time recharge my brain."
Initially he struggled with the familiar KSG dilemma of "too many good things, too little time", but he is determined to focus on areas that will help him to continue his work in poverty alleviation and economic development in Africa.
One of his proudest accomplishments as prime minister was increasing Tanzania's economic growth rate from around 3% in the mid-1990s to an impressive 6.8% last year - an achievement The Economist has recently hailed as a potential model for Africa.
Keeping the public informed was critical to ensuring the success of his economic reforms.
"Of course there was a lot of political education on why we want to do these things, telling the public where are we now and what we will attain," Sumaye said. "And, thank God, our reforms brought positive, tangible results, so people could look and say, OK, we don't have to be scared of these after all."
Sumaye spent much of his time in office on democratization. As the first prime minister to serve after the country initiated multi-party elections in 1995, Sumaye had to learn promptly how to work with opposition parties in parliament.
"I have been in politics for 20 years, ten of those as prime minister. So, after this lonely, sort of tiring job, I decided that I really needed to go somewhere and disengage myself from local politics for a while," Sumaye said. "I didn't want to go and stay somewhere, just resting doing nothing, so I thought, let me find a place where I can also get the benefit of exchanging ideas with other people but at the same time recharge my brain."
Initially he struggled with the familiar KSG dilemma of "too many good things, too little time", but he is determined to focus on areas that will help him to continue his work in poverty alleviation and economic development in Africa.
One of his proudest accomplishments as prime minister was increasing Tanzania's economic growth rate from around 3% in the mid-1990s to an impressive 6.8% last year - an achievement The Economist has recently hailed as a potential model for Africa.
Keeping the public informed was critical to ensuring the success of his economic reforms.
"Of course there was a lot of political education on why we want to do these things, telling the public where are we now and what we will attain," Sumaye said. "And, thank God, our reforms brought positive, tangible results, so people could look and say, OK, we don't have to be scared of these after all."
Sumaye spent much of his time in office on democratization. As the first prime minister to serve after the country initiated multi-party elections in 1995, Sumaye had to learn promptly how to work with opposition parties in parliament.
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