Contents - Previous - Next

This is the old United Nations University website. Visit the new site at http://unu.edu

Estimates of the resources devoted to the pursuit of science and technology

We are now in a position to estimate the expenditures in Tanzania devoted to advancing science and technology. We shall proceed by aggregation: first we will add up the Recurrent Expenditures of government institutions, both R&D institutes and universities and the technical colleges. Our aggregations, covering the years since 1983/4 to the present will then be spliced to COSTECH's, covering the years 1978/9-1988/9, yielding a continuous and quite accurate series from the first of these years, 1978/9, to the current year 1993/4. Table 5.19 provides Recurrent Expenditures on science and technology for the universities and technical colleges: the main assumptions are that 70 per cent of the University of Dar es Salaam's expenditures are on science and technology (this being the percentage of 'other costs' spent on the Engineering and Science Faculties) and that all of Sokoine Agricultural University's and the technical colleges' are.

The universities' and technical colleges' recurrent expenditures are carried over to Table 5.20, where they are joined with those of the R&D institutes which we visited. The totals can be compared with COSTECH's, which purport to cover the universities, the technical colleges and all R&D institutes. Since ours are higher for all but one of the comparable years (1983/4-1988/9) we prefer them. (Ours for the R&D institutes are biased downwards because not all institutes are covered in our sample; but the figures for the universities and technical colleges may be biased upwards, because of our questionable allocation of most of the total expenditures of the University of Dar es Salaam to science and technology.)

The final column of Table 5.20 gives total Recurrent Expenditures on science and technology financed by the Tanzanian government in terms of constant prices; i.e. in real terms (the conversion is carried out by application of the GDP deflator in Table 5.1, and by assumption that the 1987 value of 100 applies to the fiscal year 1987/8). Looking at the series, we see that expenditures have approximately doubled in real terms, from an average of roughly TSh500 million (in 1987 prices) in the late 1970s to twice that at the end of the 1980s. The prospect for the early 1990s is a further increase.

When we add in to public expenditures on Recurrent items those on Development items as well, we produce the figures in Tables 5.21 (for the R&D institutes) and 5.22 (for the universities and technical colleges too). The third column of Table 5.22 displays figures on total government funding of science and technology in current Tanzanian shillings, the fourth column total government funding in constant Tanzanian shillings (in 1987 prices). Looking again at changes in real funding, we see that the conclusion is identical, namely a rough doubling in the decade of the 1980s.

Table 5.19 Tanzania: total expenditures of universities and technical colleges on science and technology 1983/4-1993/4 (millions of current and constant TSh)

Sources:
Tables 5.16-5.18: for foreign donations in 1989,1990 and 1991, see text
Notes:
p signifies 'preliminary'
+ signifies 'more than'

Table 5.20 Tanzania: estimates of recurrent expenditures on science and technology 1978/9-1993/4 (millions of TSh)

Sources:
Table 5.19 and COSTECH
Note:
p signifies 'preliminary'

There are two further additions to be made before we reach grand totals for expenditures on the pursuit of science and technology in Tanzania: these are expenditures by the private sector and foreign donations. Let us take foreign donations first, since we have two conflicting sets of observations. As we mentioned when considering the budgets of the University of Dar es Salaam, the figures on foreign donations reported in the budget statistics are only a small fraction of those acknowledged by donors. Does the same disparity exist over the entire area of science and technology? Table 5.23 gives total donations for science and technology, according to the donors. A rough comparison with the totals in Table 5.22, column 3 (total government expenditures on science and technology in current TSh) for the same years 1989,1990 and 1991 suggests that foreign donations exceeded the Tanzanian government's total financial contributions by a very large amount, say, by twice as much. (In 1989 foreign donations were half as much again as government's funding; in 1990 nearly four times as much; and in 1991 nearly twice as much.) Not only has the Tanzanian government been increasing its contributions to science and technology, but foreign bodies have been augmenting the contributions still further.

Much the same story emerges if we narrow our focus to the furtherance of science and technology in agriculture. Table 5.24 provides the figures, with government expenditures on agricultural R&D reported in the first two columns, and the government's figures on foreign donations towards agricultural R&D in the next two columns. In the final column are the donors' figures (taken from the preceding table); these are seen to be two to three times the government's own contributions and one-and-a-half times the sum of foreign donations reported by the government. These are smaller multiples than for the previously cited differences in science and technology as a whole, but still indicative of a substantially greater R&D effort in agriculture than generally believed. Things are better than they appear.

Table 5.21 Tanzania: total expenditures of R&D institutes 1983/4-1993/4 (millions of current TSh)

Sources:
Tables 5.11 -5.14
Notes:
+ signifies 'more than'
p signifies 'preliminary'

Table 5.22 Tanzania: estimates of total public expenditures and total foreign donations for science and technology 1978/8-1993/4 (millions of current TSh)

Source:
Tables 5.15-5.19
Notes:
+ signifies 'more than'
p signifies preliminary

Table 5.23 Tanzania: foreign assistance for science and technology 1988-1991

Sources:
UNDP, May 1991, Table A.1., pp. 46-49; August 1992, Table All, pp. 42-44; and October 1993, Table All, pp. 35-41

Table 5.24 Tanzania: expenditures on agricultural science and technology 1978/9-1993/4 (millions of current TSh)

Sources:
Government Expenditures: Recurrent - 1978/9-1988/9: COSTECH, 1990, Table 3(a), p. VI-1
1989/90-1991/4: the sum of expenditures by TPRI, CAMARTEC and Sokoine Agricultural University
Total 1978/9-1988/9: COSTECH (idem) plus development expenditures of TPRI, CAMARTEC and Sokoine Agricultural University
1989/90-1993/4: as for recurrent expenditures
Foreign donations: enumerated institutions - the sum of receipts by TPRI, CAMARTEC and Sokoine Agricultural University
Total, according to Donors - UNDP May 1991, p. 46; August 1992, p. 43, and October 1993, p. 37

The final allowance to be made is for expenditures on advancing science and technology in Tanzania's para-statal firms and private sector. Here we must admit almost complete ignorance, but it is most surely ignorance of small numbers rather than ignorance of large numbers. So far as agricultural R&D is concerned, all public sector research is now administered in the Ministry of Agriculture: there is a little R&D carried on in the private sector, chiefly in tea, but the monetary amounts are small. The same holds for industry and the other production activities; para-statal and private firms do no formal R&D, and little of what would classify as informal R&D. All one encounters in conversations and plant visits are laments that none is done, and that the few scientists and larger number of engineers employed are engaged in expediting production under existing technology, rather than advancing it. In the case of Kenya, we augmented public sector expenditures on advancing science and technology by 50 per cent to allow for the para-statal firms' expenditures and approximately 10 per cent to allow for private firms; in the case of Tanzania, whose para-statal firms' scope is being reduced and whose private firms do no more R&D than Kenya's, we shall augment the government's total by one-fifth, to cover both. The figures in Table 5.25, column 4 include the augmentation, and are labelled 'National Expenditures on S&T'. In the last column they are related to Tanzania's GDP, providing a measure of the nation's own contribution to furthering science and technology.

This can be seen to have increased in two surges, the first in the early 1980s and the second in the late 1980s. As a percentage of GDP, Tanzanians are now, after this second surge, spending a little more than twice as much on the pursuit of science and technology as they did 15 years ago.

As we have discovered, foreign donations add markedly to national expenditures; the problem arises as to how to combine the two sources of funds. If we use the government's budget statistics, we will gravely underestimate foreign donations; if we use the donors' figures, we will limit our statistical series of total expenditures to the four years 1988-91. The figures in Table 5.24, columns 4 and 5 illustrate this dilemma.

What we have done is to retain both series, that for national expenditures (Table 5.25) and that for national expenditures plus foreign donations (Table 5.22, final column).

We should stress that great confidence cannot be given to this final, most highly aggregated, set of figures, for our accuracy has fallen as we have moved from government research institutes to those of the para-statals, and from the public sector to the private, and from national contributions to foreign. Nonetheless, the figures in Table 5.22 do give some indication of the overall commitment of Tanzania to advancing science and technology: they show that, thanks in part to their own efforts, and in part to the contributions of foreigners, Tanzania is allocating a creditable portion of its GDP to the task. They also permit some comparison with the other countries in our sample: a comparison that will occupy us in Chapter 7. In the meantime, we will move on to Chapter 6, in which the efforts of Uganda are described.

Table 5.25 Tanzania: public and national expenditures on advancing science and technology, and their relation to total public expenditures and GDP 1978/9-1993/4

Sources:
Table 5.22 and text
Note:
p = preliminary

Contents - Previous - Next