parastatal managers insist on keeping them secret and because the
ones that have leaked out have done so only after it had become
clear that something was drastically wrong in the way the projects
were being managed. There is therefore an unhealthy suspicion
that parastatals have something to hide in not publishing details of
the agreements. Such suspicions are not, of course, allayed by the
almost pathological insistence by those involved that by-gones be
by-gones, that old agreements should not be re-examined lest,
curiously enough, this costs Tanzania ‘millions of shillings’.® One
would have thought, on the basis of published information about
two such agreements, Kilimanjaro Hotel and Mwananchi
Engineering and Contracting Company (MECCO), that there were
possibilities of substantial savings from the re-examination of old
management agreements.

Furthermore the experience in these two cases indicates that the
training of Tanzanians is not treated as a priority by the foreign
partners so there is a real danger that what was intended as short-
term assistance might easily become a permanent arrangement. In
spite of what was stated in the formal agreements to which they
were party the training obligation was almost ignored by the
foreign managing agents of Kilimanjaro Hotel and MECCO.*
What little has been revealed to the public does not, therefore, in-
spire confidence in the bargaining abilities of those responsible
locally nor in the integrity or usefulness of foreign partners. The
adverse publicity surrounding the two published agreements did,
however, have some beneficial effects. There has since been a
considerable tightening up of control over the terms of new
agreements by the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Develop-
ment Planning and the Bank of Tanzania so that the worst ex-
cesses of the past are not likely to be repeated. Nonetheless, while
this is yet one more instance of improvement in the mechanics of
parastatal control, there is still the failure to confront the basic
ideological problem underlying all such agreements — that of how
far socialism can be built with western management personnel and
systems.

All too often the justification for reliance on western
management is couched in terms of simple technological deter-
minism. It is argued that Tanzania is dependent upon western
companies for the supply of modern technology and does not
have the personnel with sufficient technical skills to man the

25