Take a rice farmer in Kilombero. Let us call her Mama Neema. She has not read Dira ya Taifa ya Maendeleo 2050. She has heard of it, the way you hear about a wedding in the next village: there was a launch, there were speeches, and the photographs were excellent.
What she knows for certain is this. Last season her seed arrived late. The extension officer came after planting. The bank asked for a title deed she does not have. The buyer who promised June arrived in August, with a price that made her harvest feel like a donation.
None of these was a failure of vision. Every one of them was a failure of conversation.
A Trillion Dollars Needs More Than Concrete
Dira 2050 is ambitious, and it should be. By 2050, Tanzania targets a USD 1 trillion economy, per capita income of USD 7,000, life expectancy of 75 years, and 80 percent of government services available online. These are targets, not achievements, and economists are already arguing about the arithmetic. Good. Let them argue.
My worry is quieter. We treat Dira as something to build, when much of it is something people must understand, join and hold us accountable for. Roads and power lines can be procured. Trust cannot.
At the PRST Annual General Meeting in Dodoma this month, Annastazia Rugaba (The newly elected and sworn-in President of the Public Relations Society of Tanzania (PRST) put Mama Neema’s problem on a single slide. A farmer, she argued, depends on a whole system: seeds and extension, finance and insurance, energy and irrigation, roads, storage and standards, then a buyer and a market. Each link belongs to a different institution. Each institution has its own press office. Very few of them talk to each other before something goes wrong.
Silence Has an Invoice
We like to call Communication the soft stuff. It is NOT. It comes with bills.
Rugaba cited the Controller and Auditor General’s report for FY 2024/25, which found a coordination gap between TANROADS and TRC over a bridge crossing the SGR line, a gap that held up completion and handover of Lot 1 of the Dodoma Outer Ring Road. One road. One railway. No timely agreement on a bridge. That is not an engineering problem. That is a meeting that did not happen early enough.
In most institutions, communications teams only get invited at the end to arrange the ribbon-cutting, hire the photographer and write the press release. Months earlier, decision-makers had already made the key decisions without asking who they might affect or what could go wrong in public. Then, when communities protest or projects stall, leaders summon the same team to manage the narrative. Pole sana. You cannot manage a narrative you were never allowed to shape.
Citizens Are Not an Audience
Government deserves credit for a first step. The President’s Office, Planning and Investment, has launched a Dira 2050 Communication Strategy and a nationwide education campaign, with forums planned region by region. But explaining a plan is only half a sentence.
Rugaba’s test for a people-owned Dira is sharper. Citizens should understand the goals that affect them. They should have a real chance to shape decisions. And they should see their feedback produce action. An announcement nobody can answer is not communication. It is broadcasting.
Digital transformation raises the stakes. If Mama Neema can apply for a loan on her phone but cannot reach anyone who explains why it was refused, we have not digitised service. We have digitised silence.
What PRST Must Do, And How We Should be Judged
Tusidanganyane: for too long our profession has accepted being measured by press coverage, likes and the size of the banner. Those numbers flatter us. They do not help a farmer.
The presentation proposes a different deal. PRST members would organise into sector clusters, from agriculture and tourism to mining and financial services, each with a lead, a link to the relevant institutions, and one measurable task every quarter. PRST can start with a 90-day plan: map members’ expertise within the first 30 days, select priority problems and partners by day 60, and launch two pilot projects with named owners and budgets by day 90.
The proposed measures make sense. These proposals could provide a useful starting point. First and foremost, institutions could assess how well citizens understand key issues before and after communication. In addition, they could track how quickly they respond to complaints and resolve them. Furthermore, teams could monitor whether they complete corrective actions within the agreed timelines. Equally importantly, staff could establish clear channels for escalating unresolved issues to decision-makers with the authority to act.
Beyond these measures, institutions could use the findings to identify communication gaps and improve stakeholder engagement. Consequently, they could strengthen accountability and ensure that communication efforts deliver meaningful results. Ultimately, this approach could help align strategic communication with institutional priorities and national development goals.
Beyond that, institutions could use these proposed measures to identify communication gaps and areas that need improvement. Ultimately, such an approach could help strengthen accountability, improve stakeholder engagement and ensure that strategic communication contributes more meaningfully to development outcomes. Taken together, these proposed measures could help institutions evaluate the effectiveness of their strategic communication and identify areas for improvement.
Twenty-four years from now, nobody will ask Mama Neema whether she read Dira 2050. The only question will be whether she lived it. So, to every permanent secretary, chief executive and communications head reading this: who in your institution is going to tell her? And, more importantly, who is going to listen?
