The Government of Tanzania aims to transform the nation into a middle income country by 2025.
This paper analyses the rate of growth and the transformation of the economy that would be
required in order to achieve this goal.
a. Background
In his speech to the Parliament in late 2010, President Kikwete outlined his Government’s intentions
to review the Tanzania Development Vision (TDV) 2025 and prepare a 5-year development plan to
accelerate growth and increase the nation’s prosperity. Tanzania’s President’s Office Planning
Commission (POPC) is currently leading this work with the assistance of the University of Dar es
Salaam (UDSM) and the Economic and Social Research Foundation (ESRF). This paper serves as an
input to the POPC’s broader strategy revisions and aims to (i) encourage a review of the economic
growth targets for the country, and (ii) envisage the structure of Tanzania’s economy in 2025 and
the growth path required to get there.
The paper describes the sort of structural transformation that Tanzania may be expected to undergo
as it grows to middle income status. This is achieved by assembling data for a set of comparator
countries that reached middle income status over the past 50 years and reviewing the structure of
their economies as they reached this target. It then analyses what would be required for Tanzania
to transform into a country akin to these middle income comparator countries.