Indonesia and Tanzania for a Global South

Indonesian President Joko Widodo (Jokowi) is paying an official visit to Tanzania as part of a tour of four African countries. This is his first working visit to Africa as president.

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The other three countries on his tour are Mozambique, South Africa and Kenya. The latter was the first country he visited, where he met with President William Ruto on August 20. 

Jokowi arrives in Tanzania in the same spirit that prevailed at the BRICS summit and at the summit that brought the Russian president together with the African countries last July. The aim is to deepen and broaden collaboration between distant commercial and geographic regions, but connected under the will of cooperation for a Global South.

As in Kenya, the Indonesian president will meet with the highest authority of the Tanzanian government, President Samia Suluhu Hassan. Relations between Indonesia and Tanzania date back to the 1955 Asian-African Conference (AAC), as well as the participation of both countries in the Non-Aligned Movement in 1961. 

The main areas of cooperation between the two countries will be directed mainly towards agricultural development, petrochemical and fertilizer production, as well as the commercialization of pharmaceutical products.

Within this plan, the Morogoro Agriculture and Rural Training Center will benefit, a center located in a traditionally agricultural region of Tanzania, which wants to add resources, technology and capital to the self-management and ecological management initiative that has been implemented in it.

The investments will also aim at enhancing the capacity of the African country in the production of chemical products and fertilizers, starting from the commissioning of the Mnazi Bay Gas Block by Pertamina. This investment will allow an efficient supply of natural gas as the fundamental energy of the Tanzanian chemical industry.

The commercialization of medicines also represents an important step for Tanzania’s economic and social development, to which Indonesia can contribute significantly from the country’s production and import capabilities in this area.  “Indonesia is committed to participate in building Tanzania’s health security, Indonesian pharmaceutical companies will start the first exports of their products to Tanzania to help meet the country's pharmaceutical needs,” Jokowi said.

Joko Widodo’s visit starts a great collaboration project between Indonesia and the African continent, which the Indonesians have projected as a strategy of sustained cooperation for half a decade.

Tanzania just opened its embassy in Indonesia last year, creating a real starting point for collaboration between the two countries. In this regard, the Minister of Foreign Affairs Retno informed that collaboration in diplomatic training had been agreed at the meetings.

“President Jokowi invited a team from Tanzania to visit Jakarta to exchange ideas on the development of the curriculum of the diplomatic school,” said the minister.