The Government and the Investor

To understand the government's intransigence, one has to try and understand the close links that Reginald John Nolan (the Irishman behind AFC) has had with the Tanzanian establishment since the 1980s. Nolan first appeared on the Tanzanian scene as a supplier of military equipment to the Ministry of Defence (MoD), in a deal that involved a local businessman as a go-between. This deal with the middleman later went sour and that led to a marathon legal battle in the courts of law. The upshot was that Nolan lost the suit and was slapped with more than US$ 100 million judgment which were the proceeds from sales of the military equipment. This money was still in the hands of the MoD and the High Court issued a garnishee order obliging the then Principal Secretary in the MoD to transfer the money to the accounts of the judgment creditor and not to Nolan. The MoD ignored the order and, ultimately, the then Permanent Secretary in MoD was indicted for contempt of court, while Nolan himself was committed to civil prison for failure to satisfy the judgment debt. The government never released the money notwithstanding the court order.

In the early 1990s Nolan was again involved in deal to build a thermal power plant near Dar es Salaam harbour. That deal fell through as a result of pressure from the World Bank which was then supporting another power project involving pumping natural gas from Songo Songo Island in southern Tanzania. Nolan was also mentioned in another deal under which military radar equipment were to be sold to MoD on loan and Tanzania's puny gold reserves were to be used as collateral. This, then, is the man who now wishes to become a prawn farmer. It should not come as a surprise to anybody to know, for instance, that his company has a total share capital of only TShs. 100 million (slightly less than US$ 170,000). This company, however, wishes to undertake - in Mr. Nolan's own admission - 'the biggest single prawn farm in the world' at the cost of US$ 180 million, which sum is more than 1000 times bigger than AFC's own share capital! No one in the Government seems to have asked themselves about AFC's capacity to raise this kind of finance and under what conditions and guarantees.

Such is the man and his influence in high places that even after the Rufiji Delta Prawn Farming Project had been so discredited in public the Vice President once again went on record, in a high level seminar on environment and poverty eradication held in Dodoma, publicly defending it and suggesting that its opponents and critics were "environmental mujahedeen"! This is the same person who told a bewildered gathering of villagers in the Delta that "hata chungu huonjwa" (roughly, "even that which is bitter is often tasted") when the villagers expressed their fears about the negative impacts of the project.

A former cabinet minister¹ is also on record as stating - in support of the project - that: 'not all of us will die if the project is accepted'! (NEMC, 1997c: 90). Can it be wrong to suggest that the Government's insistence that the project will go ahead as planned is a result of the "closeness" between senior politicians in the Government and corrupt businessmen; and that it is - as the Warioba Commission aptly put it - "for personal interests (of the leaders) and those of the businessmen"? In the next section we look at the aftermath of the decision to approve the Prawn Farming Project.

1. Edward Barongo, former Minister of Agriculture in Mwalimu Nyerere's government.