TANZANIA has made very significant milestones in the acceleration of its human capital development by embarking on eight concrete measures, President Samia Suluhu Hassan said on Wednesday.
The measures comprise establishing early childhood development centres, financing various programmes on nutrition and neonatal and antenatal health care.
Dr Samia disclosed this during the Africa Human Capital Heads of State Summit which convened in Dar es Salaam on Wednesday.
The summit aimed to deliberate ways in which Africa can harness its human capital potentials in strengthening its economies.
President Samia said the Tanzanian government has undertaken reforms and review of education policies, curricular and learning programmes to go in line with current development demand.
“The establishment of the country’s productive social safety net which is being coordinated by the Tanzania Social Action Fund (TASAF) with the goal being to reduce poverty and improve access to critical health and education services,” said President Samia.
She added: “Since the establishment of TASAF in 2000 over one million poor households have benefited from the programme.
“At least 731 development projects ranging from infrastructure in education, agriculture, transport systems, health, water and clean and safe water have been executed.”
Among others include rolling out the fee-free education policy at the level of early childhood learning development, primary, secondary education from form one to form six.
Dr Samia underscored that investment in vocational training and apprenticeship programmes which entails offering skills to increase productivity and competition and internal abilities in utilising its human capital.
Besides, Tanzania has managed to empower its youth economically through the 10 per cent councils’ special schemes whereby youth accumulate 4 per cent and the remaining 4 per cent for women and 2 per cent for people with disabilities.
She noted that, by allowing young girls who dropped out from school due to pregnancies to resume school, Tanzania has reaped huge gains in development spheres.
Similarly, through the Building a Better Tomorrow Youth Initiative (BBT-YIA) the programme is expected to increase employment to its youth by 3 million jobs, thereby boosting the agricultural sector employment from the present 3 per cent to 10 per cent in 2030.
She called upon the private sector and civil society organisations to collaborate with the government in putting in place the right environment for the growth and prosperity of this critical resource in economic advancement.