بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم
Population Growth Is Not the Source of Poverty in Tanzania
News:
On 12/03/2024, during the launch of the 20th edition of the Tanzania Economic Update in Dar es Salaam, The World Bank claimed that rapid population growth is causing poor economic growth in the country. According to the World Bank, while the economy is projected to grow by 5.6% to 6.0% in 2024, many Tanzanians are still falling into poverty.
Comment:
The Capitalists’ assumption that population growth results into poor economic development is the result of economic theories of “scarcity of resources” and “unlimited human needs”. The ideas were then impacted into population and around late 1700’s and early 1800’s, Capitalists argued that population growth would depress living standards.
The Capitalism theories assumed that, given that there is a fixed quantity of resources, population growth will eventually reduce the amount of resources that each individual can consume, ultimately maximum scarcity and poverty. They proposed ‘moral restraint’ (refraining from having “many” children).
In reality, Tanzania and African countries in general, have abundant resources including human resources (population) enough to make them developed if not colonial exploitation by capitalist nations. For instance, Tanzania estimated with gold reserves of about 45 million ounces (1,275 tones), is the producer of diamonds for centuries, apart from other minerals, 1,424 kilometre coastline, 44 million hectares of arable land with an estimated 29.4 million hectares suitable for irrigation arable land, the area of freshwater cover is estimated at 54,337 sq. km, which is about 6.1% percent of the total country’s surface area, territorial Sea of 64,000 sq. km., over 54 trillion cubic feet of natural gas etc.
This Malthusian theory is unrealistic, since what we witness today is endless consumption of vast resources supporting the growing population. The adherents of this theory didn’t foresee the technological advancements that would raise productivity and reduce the toll of infectious diseases and so make life prosperous. Today modern farming techniques have allowed food production to scale much faster than Malthus could have anticipated. The remarkable impressive economic growth of Asian countries like China and India today were highly facilitated by their population size.
In fact, what makes Tanzania poor and other developing countries poor, is the Capitalism ideology which uses colonialism as its unchanging methodology of achieving its exploitative goal. Colonial exploitative policies like free market, brain drain and paper economy, have made developing nations farms of the colonial states leaving these countries in economic stagnation and economic shackle of the West.
It is vividly clear that humankind needs a just and fair ideology which is Islam, via its Khilafah (Caliphate) state would totally liberate humankind from evil, brutal and exploitative economy to true prosperity of this world and Hereafter.
Written for the Central Media Office of Hizb ut Tahrir by
Said Bitomwa
Member of the Media Office of Hizb ut Tahrir in Tanzania