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Introduction:

Tanzania is one of the African countries that followed a socialist regime. A policy called 
&lsquo;Ujamaa&rsquo;, or &lsquo;African Socialism&rsquo;, was created and implemented by ex-President Julius 
Nyerere. &nbsp;Ujamaa&nbsp;in Swahili means &lsquo;family&rsquo; or &lsquo;unity&rsquo;. The vision of Ujamaa focuses on the 
proposal of a model of development for Africa that would be the basis of African Socialism. 
One of the basic principals is that a person becomes a person through the people or the 
community. Better represented by the expression, &ldquo;I am because we are&rdquo;.&nbsp; 
 
Maybe you do not understand the idea of &lsquo;I am because we are&rsquo; very well. I am going to 
explain a bit more through an example: 
A man found the children of a community at play. He decided to introduce a new game to 
the children. He took a packet of sweets and placed it far from the children. Only the child 
that ran and reached the sweets first would win them. The man organised the children and 
gave a signal for the race to begin. At the signal, the children joined hands and all ran 
together in the direction of the packet of sweets. Arriving there, they divided the sweets 
between all of them. The man, not understanding what had happened, went to ask the 
children why they had done this, knowing that they could have ran individually to win the 
packet of sweets. One of the children then explained: I do not want to win all the sweets if 
the others are going to be without. I want to have sweets if they also have them. I want all of 
us to have sweets. &lsquo;I am because we are&rsquo;. 
 
From this point of view, we can see that with collective strength, leaving individualism and 
fighting for common objectives, we can develop our nations. Therefore, through Ujamaa 
Tanzania would manage to establish a path to economic growth and social development, 
which would make this nation a reference for the whole of the African continent. Ujamaa 
was based on three principles. The first was based on the creation of a single party system, 
in order to help solidify the political cohesion of Tanzania and to avoid destabilising 
disputes; the second consisted of the institutionalisation of economic and social policy for 
the promotion of equality and creation of popular assemblies for the participation of the 
working class besides nationalising key sectors of the economy; the third was based on the 
formatting of self-sufficiency by means of transformation of habits and cultural customs. 
Following Nyerere it would be necessary to implement changes in behaviour to achieve the 
establishment of African Socialism. 
 
Note that the unequal distribution of the economy and the consequent contradiction to 
opportunities for the acquisition of goods is what Nyerere wanted to combat through 
Ujamaa. In spite of Nyerere himself not having implemented his policy with success, and its 
successors having abandoned it, many defend that the policy of Ujamaa might assist in the 
socio-economic development of Tanzania and of other African countries. 
 
In this task you are going to deepen your knowledge on the visions of Nyerere for the socio- 
economic development of Tanzania through the policy of Ujamaa and as a reference for 
African Socialism.

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