Why is the WHO so worried about Tanzania?

The World Health Organisation has drawn up a shortlist of countries it’s most concerned about during the pandemic. Tanzania is at the top. The government’s lack of transparency during the crisis is a big part of the problem. In recent years the country has imposed increasingly repressive laws to muffle the media — newspapers fined and journalists arrested. Or worse. For the purposes of this piece I am ‘Tom James’; I’m either more circumspect or less courageous than my fellow journos here. When the international media — fed by stringers whose identities are disguised — try to report on the pandemic, they are accused of scaremongering, their attempts described by the government as a ‘form of warfare’. Brave journalists keep popping their heads above parapets to tell the world what’s really happening. Amnesty International recently stated the obvious: nailing journalists who criticise their governments’ approach to Covid-19 is hampering efforts to tackle it. Stories leak anyway when there’s a gagged press, but they bleed out via all kinds of media and mutate on the way. Are people dropping dead on the streets? Are the numbers of infected being misrepresented? Are there secret midnight burials of Covid-19 casualties? Who knows.

But why is the WHO so concerned about Tanzania? Well, for a start there is inadequate testing and almost no sharing of data. The Africa CDC reported that as of 15 May Tanzania has conducted just 652 tests and, unlike almost every other country, is not submitting regular updates. Next door in Kenya, they’ve performed more than 50 times as many tests: 36,918. Tanzania’s President, John Pombe Magufuli, is in hiding at home in the west of the country. He took his private jet there weeks ago to hunker down, but not before urging his citizens to gather in church to pray this thing away.