A court in Iringa today sentenced police officer Pacifius Simon to 15 years imprisonment for the manslaughter of journalist Daud Mwangosi in September 2012. In one sense, this brings the case to a close. But it is a very unsatisfactory ending. Continue reading
The charts I have shared recently – last week on the Corruption Perceptions Index and this week on the Freedom House Freedom Rating – got me thinking: is there a correlation between corruption and freedom?
The chart below looks at data for each country in Africa that appears on both the Corruption Perceptions Index and the Freedom House Ratings. Each circle represents a country. Those further to the left are the countries with more perceived corruption, those to the right have less. The countries that are higher up on the chart have more freedom, lower have less freedom. Continue reading
Tanzania’s freedom rating has dropped. The latest annual report by Freedom House on political rights and civil liberties around the world showed that Tanzania’s score dropped from 3.0 to 3.5. It’s may sound like only a small change, but the scale of these ratings only goes from 1 to 7. (1 is the most free, 7 is the least.) More significantly, it is the first time Tanzania’s rating has dropped for over 20 years.
This chart shows Tanzania’s rating for each year since 1994, just as multi-party democracy was being reintroduced. Continue reading
The latest Corruption Perceptions Index was released last week by Transparency International.
The index gives each country a score between 1 and 100, representing the level of perceived corruption. (It is understandably difficult to measure actual corruption as it usually happens in secret). A higher score is better – ie. it means the level of perceived corruption is lower.
So what does it tell us about countries in East Africa? Continue reading
It’s Tanzanian Independence Day, with a difference. President Magufuli has cancelled the usual official celebrations, to save money and focus on a national clean-up exercise instead.
From various sources, all on 9 December 2015, with President Magufuli leading from the front:
And now the cartoons:
And finally, another image seen today on social media, which may or may not be relevant:
These figures come from reports of observers in 5,325 polling stations, collected up to 9.30am on the day after polling day. The data are preliminary figures, and may be subject to later changes as more observers submit reports.
