The 2008 financial crisis and Tanzania’s response

This study has sought to explain the nature and root cause of the 2008 financial crisis as well as the measures taken to resolve it. It has reviewed neokeynesianism and neoliberalism, the two dominant perspectives on the crisis, and concluded that they only provide piecemeal, ahistorical and economy-centric descriptions that delink the crisis from the internal contradictions of the capitalist system. The study has used the Marxian over–accumulation theory to show that the 2008 crisis was a manifestation of the system–wide and historical crisis of capitalism, whose root cause lies in the monopoly tendency of capital. The Marxist theory has also been used to analyse the stimulus package as well as the Kilimo Kwanza initiative – Tanzania’s short term and long–term solutions to the 2008 crisis. The study has found that the stimulus package was designed to generate profit to corporations without engaging in production or commercial activity. Designed and financed by developed countries, the stimulus package also laid conditions for an agrarian reform, which was operationalized through Kilimo Kwanza. Kilimo Kwanza is not a proactive undertaking but a positive response to the demands of giant corporations which seek for new channels for absorbing their over-accumulated capital. The initiative benefits giant corporations at the expense of smallholder producers in the country. The study ends by proposing disengagement from the global capitalist system by building a self-sustaining economy, as well as the pursuit of an agrarian reform that puts the interest of smallholder producers at the core.