I first met Dr Magufuli at an international conference on infrastructure in Durban, South Africa, sometime in 2003. I had just assumed office as (Kenyan) Minister for Roads, Public Works and Housing in the National Rainbow Coalition (NARC) government of President Mwai Kibaki. By that time, Dr Magufuli had held a similar portfolio for some time in Tanzania. At the ministry, I discovered that I had inherited a bigger problem than I had imagined. The ministry was mired in massive corruption.
Contractors were demanding pay — and getting paid — for works they had not done, or those done way below specifications. Nearly the entire ministry budget was being used to clear pending bills that kept rising. The ministry was neither constructing any new roads nor maintaining the existing ones.
It is in that context that I attended the Durban conference. I wanted to share my experiences, learn from fellow ministers and other experts and, hopefully, also attract some funding for the massive infrastructure that Kenya needed when we took over. Magufuli took immense interest in my presentation. He disclosed that the problems I had mentioned were the same ones he encountered when he took over at Roads and Public Works in Tanzania.
For a start, he advised that I look into two areas: procurement and designing and tendering processes. From his experiences in Dar es Salaam, he had ring-fenced these areas as the hideouts for corruption and conduits for loss of government funds. His advice was that I needed to shorten the procurement process, which are usually long-winding just to facilitate corruption. He also advised that we adopt a system of designing and building roads at the same time as opposed to designing the entire road first, then tendering and then constructing. That way, we would get quality roads faster and at cheaper prices.
Our friendship bloomed. We became advisers to each and partners in the war on corruption and cowboy contractors in the roads sector.
When Dr Magufuli declared his interest in the Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) ticket for the presidency in 2015, I took keen interest because his contest was my contest, just as mine had been his. We got deeply involved and we were excited when he won.
He was an avowed enemy of corruption. That, in my view, was his most outstanding trait. He could not stand the idea of public officials using public resources for their own benefit
He invited me to Dar almost immediately after his inauguration. During that visit, he confessed to me that he knew how to run ministries but needed advice on how to run a government. I advised my friend that, for a start, he should look no farther than the revenue and procurement officers at all levels of government. He listened. In some cases, he personally walked into offices to see how work was being done. Soon, Tanzania’s revenue doubled, then trebled. The new president suddenly had money to build roads, ports, hospitals and railways without relying on donors.
Magufuli developed very keen interest on what happened to Kenya’s standard gauge railway in terms of its cost. He was determined to avoid the pitfalls. That is how he constructed Tanzania’s SGR four years later at a much lower cost than ours. President Magufuli was a very independent-minded person.
During his tenure, people developed this belief that he would always listen to me. While we did exchange views and agreed on many things, it is not true that he agreed with every suggestion I made. When he disagreed, he did so firmly, no matter who he was disagreeing with. Ideologically, he was a populist and a social democrat. He allowed the private sector to grow, but under very watchful eyes of the State.He felt that the private sector, if not watched, could be overbearing, especially to the lowly in society.
He was an avowed enemy of corruption. That, in my view, was his most outstanding trait. He could not stand the idea of public officials using public resources for their own benefit. If you hated corruption, you were where his friend and confidante; if you were corrupt, you were his enemy.
He was determined to put Tanzania ahead through industrialisation. In that endeavour, he saw Kenya as the stumbling block, hence his sometimes-hostile stand against Kenya. We had a discussion on this, too, my position being that industrialised countries in Europe and Asia, for instance, co-exist and we could do the same here. He was not convinced.
Outside Tanzania, his other business was Africa. He had little interest in other continents. Even in Africa, he was selective with his visits. I remember he visited Kenya, Ethiopia, Nigeria, South Africa, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi and DRC. Tanzania was his first and last love.
Magufuli was a CCM ideologue who grew through the ranks of the party and embraced Mwalimu Julius Kambarage Nyerere’s ideals on patriotism, self-reliance and pan-Africanism. In many ways, he went even farther than Mwalimu. While Nyerere embraced internationalism and had a broader view of the world and Tanzania’s place in it, Magufuli was a super-nationalist with little regard for the rest of the world. He was resoundingly successful in transforming Tanzania in just six years.
Magufuli believed that success comes from hard work. In Tanzania today, people report to offices very early, unlike in the past. And they do not just sit there; they work. I hope his successor, President Samia Suluhu, builds on this tradition that is good for Tanzania and Africa.
(H. E. The Rt. Hon. Raila Odinga, is a Kenyan businessman and politician and son of the illustrious statesman Jaramogi Oginga Odinga. Raila is a former Prime Minister of Kenya and Chairman of the main opposition party, Orange Democratic Movement (ODM). He is currently the African Union High Representative for Infrastructure Development).
