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AFTER being granted His Royal Highness Prince Khalifa bin Salman Al Khalifa Sustainable Development Award for her outstanding accomplishments throughout the years, powerful professor Anna Tibaijuka continues to strive for change and hopes it will inspire others, especially women, to make the world a better place.
Speaking exclusively to GulfWeekly, she believes the recognition she has received came as a new ‘source of inspiration’ not only for her but all the people living in her East African country.
The Tanzanian CCM politician and Member of Parliament for Muleba South constituency was presented with the reputable award by the Prime Minister in New York at the United Nations (UN) headquarters on the sidelines of the 71st UN General Assembly (UNGA) session.
The accolade is given to individuals or institutions who are actively involved in actualising Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). It embodies the Prime Minister’s vision at a global level regarding the need to achieve sustainable urban development and promote the development culture among all communities, especially in developing countries.
This award is also meant to motivate individuals to commit extra efforts at national, regional and international levels to achieve the award’s noble humanitarian goals. Anna was selected in recognition of her role and contribution throughout her posts during her career.
She was the former Minister of Lands, Housing and Human Settlements, Tanzania, former UN- Under SecretaryGeneral of the UN and former Executive Director, UNHabitat and Director – General of the UN Office in Nairobi. She has also championed in consolidating cooperation among various countries across the world, which have seen her recognised by governments, international and academic institutions.
Anna said: “I feel honoured, privileged and humbled. I won as an individual woman in the award’s third cycle and almost seven years since I left the United Nations and went back home to work at country level. “I consider this remarkable because one would have thought I had long been out of the global scene and forgotten. “Clearly, HRH has an efficient machinery to track international development agents and events and support those working for their improvement. I thank the jury for their efficiency to track me down in Tanzania and recommend me. “This award came as a new source of inspiration and renewed hope for my people of Tanzania in general and the Muleba South community in particular that I represent.”
Tanzania is a country known for its vast wilderness areas. They include the plains of Serengeti National Park, a safari mecca populated by the ‘big five’ game - elephant, lion, leopard, buffalo and rhino - and Kilimanjaro National Park, home to Africa’s highest mountain.
Offshore lays the tropical islands of Zanzibar, with Arabic influences, and Mafia, with a marine park home to whale sharks and coral reefs.
Anna said: “I left the UN in September 2010 to return home and work for sustainable development goals at grassroots level. “The award came as a reconfirmation of the achievements I have made but also of the hard work that still lies ahead. Practically all Tanzanians from different walks of life rejoiced with me. “It has been congratulations and spontaneous celebrations everywhere, including in my family, my village, my constituency, my municipality, my home region, the parish, the mosque, the women groups, the youth, fellow academics, fellow Parliamentarians as well as High level Government officials and Party leaders, including our beloved and indefatigable new President, Dr John Pombe Magufuli, who promptly sent me a congratulatory message observing that ‘this honour is a blessing from God’.”
Anna’s list of achievements is long and wide. Her work in the normative field as a campaigner is relatively well known and was instrumental in her winning the 2009 Goteborg Award for Sustainable Development from Sweden. She said: “Even before leaving the UN, along with two other men, I won the prestigious Goteborg Award for Sustainable Development, dubbed by the Swedes as the equivalent of the ‘Nobel Prize in the Environment’.
Dr Julius Nyerere, one of the founding fathers of African liberation, the ‘Father of Tanzania’, said: “It can be done, play your part”. “I feel good and I feel grateful to all those who worked with me to reach these heights, those who believed in me and trusted me.”
While this was a remarkable accomplishment, it was the other aspects of her contributions, namely the institutional reform at UNHABITAT, which helped her, earn the HRH Khalifa Sustainable Development Award in September. Upon her arrival in Nairobi, she found the UN-HABITAT Centre in difficulty, without donor support and adequate funding, with staff morale down and facing uncertainty.
According to Anna, through hard work and with the grace of God, in two years, she managed to change all that for the better. The first major reform was institutional strengthening whereby the UN-HABITAT Centre was upgraded from a centre to a fully-fledged programme by a decision of the Special Session of the General Assembly of June 2001, on the Habitat Agenda dubbed Istanbul+5 in New York.
Secondly, she worked on restoring donor confidence to mobilise financial support. Voluntary financial contributions increased sixfold turning the once bankrupt organisation into one with a comfortable financial reserve. She said: “During my tenure, I managed to convince donor countries such as the United States who had already stopped funding the
organisation to resume their contributions.
Bahrain was among the donor countries supporting us for a number of normative and operational programmes, including in the humanitarian fields and a Special Housing programme for the Palestinian people.” Next she rebuilt staff morale and tenure.
There was improved performance as periods for staff contracts increased from the very insecure 1-3 months, to a standard 2-year contract by the time she left in 2010. She then strengthened and opened new regional offices to localise and improve UNHABITAT’s effectiveness including Fukuoka Japan for Asia and the Pacific, Brussels for the European Union, Rio de Janeiro for Latin America, New York for UN Headquarters, Washington DC for North America and the World Bank, Cairo for the Arab Countries, Bangkok for South East Asia, Warsaw for Poland and Eastern Europe, Geneva for Humanitarian activities and Nairobi for Africa.
Most notable was the placing of the UN-HABITAT Programme Managers at the UNDP offices in Africa, Asia and Latin America to help national level government to keep into focus the challenge of sustainable urbanisation and planning that tends to get forgotten as national governments in developing countries grapple with other day-to-day challenges.
Finally, she strengthened and started a number of specific supportive programmes and institutions to partner with UN-HABITAT in delivering its mandate over years to come including the establishment of ministerial conferences on housing and urban development in Africa (2004) and Asia (2006) that now have permanent secretariats, in Nairobi and Delhi respectively, as well as capacity building in local government and governance and being instrumental in the formation of the United Cities and Local Government (UCLG) that is based in Barcelona, Spain.
She also anchored housing and slum upgrading programmes in Africa, Asia and Latin America in national budgets to move to scale. Anna also launched the Global Water and Sanitation Trust Fund at UN-HABITAT that leveraged further resources and would grow into a huge multi-million dollar programme providing support for both new and physical rehabilitation of dilapidated and abandoned safe water and sanitation facilities around the developing world.
Another impressive feat was brokering a new consensus that saw the establishment of a Special Human Settlements Programme in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) and a Technical Cooperation Trust Fund (TCTF) for it. Bahrain and Saudi Arabia became its first core supporters.
While her reforms were many, one that she is particularly proud of was working tirelessly to establish a programme for the empowerment of women to access affordable housing in cities through formation of housing cooperatives. Called Women Land Access Trusts (WLATS).
This pragmatic programme aimed at establishing secretariats or financial intermediaries which would be run by educated women social entrepreneur as umbrellas or apex organisations for affiliated independent housing cooperatives formed by ordinary women from all walks of life.
Anna, who always stood strongly for women rights, believes this award will help motivate other women. She said: “The struggle for the emancipation of women and the establishment of gender equality is a cultural one so bound to take time. “In Africa, I am afraid it is still at its rudimentary stage but we are making some good progress especially in enacting laws that protect women’s rights and even laws promoting affirmative action.
However, one cannot just legislate for cultural change. “Despite such women’s advances there are still huge cultural and institutional bottlenecks that must be overcome to anchor and mainstream our gains, and avoid them to be eroded especially when more conservative leaders come to power.
“In Tanzania, my history working on women’ rights tells the story of this danger. After the liberal and progressive founding father of the nation stepped down from office, women issues deteriorated. “Tokenism took over from real women advancement.
An independent membership based Tanzania National Women’s Council (BAWATA) which was formed to fight and work for women’s rights and emancipation was abolished by the government to protect an ineffective women organisation affiliated to the ruling party.
“We had no option but to take the matter to a constitutional court that finally, after 11 years, ruled in favour of BAWATA. The constitutional court ordered that BAWATA must be allowed to open and operate branches wherever women live and work.
“Credit goes to Issa Shivji, a distinguished Professor of Constitutional Law at the University of Dar es Salaam who, single handedly, working gratis for 11 years managed to land the women’s movement this landmark victory. “It was actually against this background that in 1998, after we had taken our matter to the constitutional court that I had opted to take time out to work for the UN until the BAWATA matter was resolved. “I kept my promise and returned to Tanzania in 2010 after the BAWATA matter was settled.
This example from Tanzania shows you the odds still facing the independent women movement in African countries. “I came to realise that despite the odds and bias against us as a gender, there is a lot of goodwill out there and we must trust good male leaders as strategic allies when we meet them.
“One such is my former boss Dr Kofi Annan. I hope that the award will inspire other women to work hard and have faith that their efforts will be recognised. My late father was right when he taught me resilience and faith.” Anna started from humble beginnings, growing up in the Kagera region of Tanzania on the western shores of Lake Victoria as smallholder banana coffee farmers.
She was the fifth child in a line of 12 siblings, 10 of which are being girls. She said: “In the African tradition that was considered a misfortune for my late parents, especially my mother who was being harassed by the clan patriarchy for that ‘disaster’.
However, my father stood by her, refused to marry another woman who was believed would produce sons and decided to comfort her by sending all of us girls to school. “Despite his limited experience outside our village, my late father was a visionary and was able to understand education would transform the situation for women and improve our opportunities in society.
“He used to tell his clansmen that with education women would do wonders. He instilled in us a sense of duty, self-respect and self confidence. “Being a woman is not a handicap he used to tell us, so work hard, respect everyone as you stand up for your own rights and self-worth. Never bow to anybody trying to bring you down because you are a woman. That upbringing came to shape who I am today.”
Anna believes it helped her excel at school, at college, in her academic career (19751998), the UN (1998-2010) and currently in politics (2011 to present day).
In 1984, she received a doctorate in economics from the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences in Uppsala. In 1975, she graduated from the University of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania.
Her secondary and primary education was from high standard schools run by Catholic missionaries in her home region. “I am grateful for that privilege and rare opportunity for African girls of my age. I was able to break ranks and become the first African woman elected twice by the UN General Assembly to lead one of its agencies, UNHABITAT, in 2002 and 2006.
“I also became the first woman appointed to lead one of the UN headquarter stations of Nairobi when I became its Director General (2006-2009). I was appointed Minister for Land, Housing and Human Settlements Development, of one of the most difficult ministerial portfolios in Tanzania (20112014) and in the 2015 national elections, I was re-elected as a Member of Parliament for my constituency of Muleba South for another five years.
So right now, I am in a good position to continue to serve my community, my country and the international community.” Anna married a man who was very supportive of her talents so that gave her an additional advantage too. She says her late husband, ambassador Wilson Tibaijuka, played an instrumental role in her struggles and the resultant successes.
She added: “My father was my liberator and my husband was my supporter. I must add my mother who was always hard-working and always insisted that work uncompleted is not work at all. “She taught me to focus, to get things done, the art of follow up and follow through. These early experiences are important in shaping what we become. My children too have
grown up to be supportive. It is difficult to make any good impact in this world without a good family to rely on. I am thankful to them all for the sacrifice they must make.”
Now, as an elected Member of Parliament for a large rural constituency, she faces dayto-day challenges to help, guide, mobilise, inform and fight for the interest of more than 500,000 people in 25 wards or counties in an area of over 10,300sq/km that make up Muleba District, one of the poorest in Tanzania with the per capita income of about TZS 640,000 ($304) per annum below the national average of TZS 1,000,000 ($523).
She explained: “In a situation like that, the economic and cultural reality facing an MP is that people look up to you not only as their representative in government but also as their enabler and supporter and donor in emergency situations such as illnesses and disasters that can face families. “Orphans, widows, poor children and old people look up to you to offer instant help when in dire need. Quite regularly, hungry people turn at your doorstep looking for food and you just cannot walk away from them.
“It can be a daunting task if your heart is not in it. However, for me I find this the very reason to remain engaged and working with the people to fight poverty and deliver sustainable development goals. It is the reason I decided of my free will to leave the UN and return to my country while I was still strong to work at community level and make my contribution, however small.
Here I am guided by the teaching of St Mother Theresa of Calcutta, who said: ‘There are no big things. It is small things that become big things’. “The world today has many challenges as it has opportunities and it is interconnected bringing us closer together. It is important that we come to grip with this new reality, learn to celebrate our diversity and live together in harmony.
“The UN was founded to promote peace and prosperity around the world. My present and next agenda is precisely that - making my community successful. “Countries and peoples like those of Bahrain and Statesmen like HRH Prince Khalifa who have transformed their own countries successfully into prosperity and who continue to engage and encourage those of us still struggling to catch up, including through prestigious awards, are our source of inspiration and hope.
“United we shall overcome.”
