Recently at Dar es Salaam’s Hyatt Hotel, January Makamba, the CCM member of parliament for Bumbuli and the Chairman of the Parliamentary Committee on Energy and Minerals was invited to speak at the monthly gathering of the influential CEO’s Roundtable. After thanking his hosts for the invitation – he called the forum’s Chairman Ali Mufuruki a ‘thought leader…in business and society’ – Mr. Makamba then proceeded to address the ongoing power crisis in Tanzania. A few days earlier the National Bureau of Statistics had revealed that the country’s economic growth had slowed to 5.8% in the first quarter of 2011 compared to 7.7% at a corresponding time the year before, largely due to the severe power shortages afflicting the country. For the nation’s titans of business that evening, whose bottom lines have been hit hard by the continuing power woes, there was nothing more apt to talk about.
There is no need for public fights and show of machismo
Mr. Makamba provided a sobering assessment of the status quo. He spoke of the energy sector’s supply-demand deficit, TANESCO’s and the government’s flawed planning, their panicked tendency for ill-advised financing of contracts and revealed his fear that what was once described as a temporary problem is now in danger of becoming a ‘permanent crisis.’
Nevertheless, Mr. Makamba suggested to his audience that he was not simply a critic. He proposed that Tanesco break-up into three constituent parts which can then raise their own individual financing through an IPO. He made a case for improving bureaucracy to ‘make it easy for private investment in the energy sector.’ Furthermore, he argued for innovation in alternative energy sources such as wind, coal, solar and geothermal which can work to reduce the country’s dependence on hydropower. He concluded his speech with a challenge, telling the leaders of industry in attendance that they too had a part to play. He said,
‘[B]y 2020, revenues to power providers are expected to hit $3 billion annually, while their expenditure around $2 billion. At current values of power to the economy, the power sector will contribute well over $11 billion to our national GDP by 2030. This opens up an array of extraordinarily impressive business opportunities for you. And it will be a shame if you stay on the sidelines.’
The next day, the speech made front-page headlines. The Citizen declared, ‘Now Makamba punches holes in govt power plan.’ It’s Kiswahili counterpart Mwananchi went with, ‘Makamba amuumbua Waziri Ngeleja’ [Makamba humiliates Minister Ngeleja]. Both newspapers, published by Mwananchi Communications, a subsidiary of the regional media conglomerate The Nation Media Group, focused on parts of the speech that pitted Mr. Makamba against the minister for energy and minerals William Ngeleja, to the great chagrin of the parliamentarian. Apparently, it was exactly this narrative, of ‘a public fight and show of machismo’, that he was trying to avoid.
Newsmakers as Media Outlets
A day later Mr. Makamba took to his Facebook page where he chastised the press saying, ‘the media in general [need] to improve the quality of the public debate on energy, [rather than] inflaming sentiments through such “flashy” headlines.’ He then posted his speech on the blog Taifa Letu, linked it back to his Facebook and Twitter pages and encouraged his legion of ‘friends’ and ‘followers’ to read it in its entirety for themselves. The text of the speech was also picked up by the popular Michuzi blog and the widely read discussion platform JamiiForums.
The nature of how this incident evolved has dramatic implications for the mainstream press. After what he deemed to be unsatisfactory coverage, Mr. Makamba decided to bypass the MSM and made his case directly to the public. He was able to do that because of social media. His Facebook page boasts over 4,800 ‘friends’. And according to the Twitter analytic site tweetreach.com, his tweet about the speech reached over 7400 people. Additionally, the fact that the highly popular Michuzi blog and JamiiForums posted it on their platforms (according to the technology blog TechMtaa, Jamii claims over 1.2 million unique visitors) assured another huge potential readership. This apparent reach is close to surpassing that of The Citizen’s, the self-proclaimed leading English daily, which has an estimated circulation of 15,000.*
Before the advent of social networking sites and blogs, a public figure needed to engage the press to communicate with the public. These days, however, a January Makamba can actively compete with the media for the same audience. Through blogs, Facebook and Twitter, the newsmaker now has his own media outlets. This new reality threatens to render newspapers irrelevant.
* This figure comes from a source familiar with the circulation figures of the The Citizen.