Like many African states and other developing countries, Tanzania has adopted 2 diametrically opposed models of economic organization that have mutually failed to launch the country on a path of sustainable economic development. Indeed, the socialist policies advanced by Nyerere under the rubric of Ujamaa created a weak economy heavily dependent upon aid and loans from foreign countries, international financial institutions, and commercial banks. The free-market policies advanced by Nyerere's successors under the auspices of the IFI-sponsored SAPs have equally failed to rectify the endemic economic crisis.
While a degree of macroeconomic stability has been achieved, especially in the realm of containing inflation, a growing negative balance of payments, a continued dependence on the exportation of weak agricultural commodities, a mammoth debt, and an enormous degree of poverty continue to characterize the economic situation in Tanzania. If nothing else, the major lesson that can be drawn from the Tanzanian experience is that solutions to economic problems based on unbending principles of ideology are bound to fail in one way or another.
While the Tanzanian government continues to base its policies on free market panaceas (cure-alls), the recent IMF and World Bank's Heavily Indebted Poor Countries Initiative (HIPCI), which reduces the debt-servicing obligations of Tanzania and other heavily indebted poor countries, may enable the government to spend more money on needed social services. The aim of the HIPCI is in fact to accomplish exactly that, with the ultimate intention of creating a more educated labor force and thus a more skilled economy. This is certainly a step in the right direction, though it is doubtful that such a measure will succeed on its own.