Why Tanzania? The problems we are trying to solve.
Here we have listed some of the many compelling reasons why we have chosen to focus our work on Tanzania.
Poverty
Tanzania is home to 60 million people.
90% of Tanzania’s population lives in poverty. That means 54 million people are living on less than $5.50 PPP per day. This is less than the cost of your take-away coffee.
It also means 49% of the population - or nearly 30 million people - are extremely poor and living on less than $1.90 PPP a day. This is the international definition of extreme poverty.
People living in poverty often start life at a disadvantage and pass this poverty on to their children.
Most of these people live in rural areas where there is no electricity, no clean water, and no sewage system. This is the people we work with every day.
Children
In Tanzania, 283 children under 5 years old die every day. That is the same as one child dying every 5 minutes. Of every hour. Of every day. Of every year.
Most of them of simple and treatable causes. Diarrhoea for example. Diarrhoea is the leading cause of childhood death in Tanzania.
In rural areas, such as the Nyamatongo Ward, 38% of children under 5 are living with stunted growth and development. Irreversible, but preventable.
Stunted growth and development is caused by malnutrition, prolonged and repeated infections, and untreated worms and parasites. Children, who doesn’t get enough food to grow and who has to share their scarce nutrition with worms and parasites, are not likely to be able to focus on learning.
Women
Every year, 11,000 mothers die during childbirth in Tanzania. That is 30 women every day, or one death every 50 minutes.
The main reasons being lack of access to quality healthcare and in most cases completely preventable.
Gender inequality is prevalent in Tanzania and starts for girls already at a very young age when they are deprived of the chance of an education in favour of their brothers. Without a good education, many girls and young women will remain both financially and emotionally dependent on parents, partners, or husbands.
Family planning
42% of girls aged 15-19 living in poverty have had a live birth or are pregnant.
Abortion is illegal in Tanzania.
Sex and HIV/AIDS:
Young women, especially in poor rural settings, are often coerced into sex in return for money, food, school supplies, and other necessities.
Physical and sexual violence is common with 30% of married or partnered women aged 15–24 indicating having experienced physical or sexual violence from a male intimate partner in the last year.
More than 1.6 million people are living with HIV in Tanzania. This equates to about 4.6%.
Every year about 72,000 people are newly infected with HIV, and 24,000 people die from an AIDS-related illness.
New HIV infections in Tanzania among young women aged 15–24 years were more than double those among young men: 16,000 new infections among young women, compared to 7,600 among young men.
Women and young girls have a higher risk of being infected with HIV at an earlier age than men due to gender inequality. For example, they often have difficulties in negotiating safe sex procedures, older sexual partners and younger average age when entering marriage.
education
While 83% of school aged children enrols primary school only 47% of children finishes primary school - the remaining children drop out or never enters primary school.
23% of children makes it to secondary school (being year 7-9).
Only 1% enters any further education.
If you are a girl 1 in 4 (25%) doesn’t get to go to school at all. It is a researched fact that people living in poverty has a tendency to invest in one child. And that one child is most often a boy.
In Tanzania, it is law to ban teenage girls from continuing education should they fall pregnant. Also, after she has given birth. The teacher can be punished as well leading to compulsory pregnancy tests at school.
25% of Tanzanians are illiterate.
Disability
There are 4.2 million Tanzanians living with a disability.
People with disabilities are often among the poorest and most marginalised in society. Disability has a significant impact on health, employment and education.
More than half of children with disabilities do not attend school as a result of their health or activity limitations. Illiteracy among Tanzanians with a disability is 48%.
There is a strong correlation between poverty and disability affecting the whole household of the person living with a disability.
We have observed that most people living with a disability in Nyamatongo Ward are extremely poor and only a handful are pursuing income generating activities.
By giving people with disabilities opportunities to become financially independent the economic welfare of the whole household will increase.
People with disabilities (PWDs) bear the double burden of poverty and exclusion due to financial, social, and environmental barriers coupled with the high degree of stigma experienced by PWDs across Tanzania.
Elderly
Life expectancy is just 65 years.
80% of elderly people in Tanzania live in rural areas with the overwhelming majority having no secure income.
Often elderly members of the family will be looking after grandchildren and other minors to allow parents to find work in the cities.
The elderly population of Tanzania often has limited access to healthcare services due to cost, quality and distance.
water and sanitation
1/3 of the population (that’s about 20M) has no access to ‘improved water’ meaning no access to a shared public tap or a protected well, but only access to seasonal pools of rainwater or surface water from lakes.
More than 90% rely on ‘unimproved sanitation facilities’ (this means a hole in the ground) or on nothing at all (this means behind doing your business behind a bush or in the lake).
Untreated water collected from Lake Victoria remains the main water source for the majority of the residents in Nyamatongo Ward which together with the common need of open defecation creates a health hazard.
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