This is the account of a week spent teaching antitrust law in a World Bank sponsored program for the Tanzanian Fair Competition Commission and members of their High Court.  Before I leave, my seven year old daughter asks “why do you want to go to Africa?”  So do some friends and clients.  Most of what we hear about Africa is awful.  Extraordinary violence, famine, tribal war, Aids, contagion, and more.  My purpose is not to explain why a lawyer from Cleveland would head off on the 4th of July for sub-Saharan Africa, but what I found there.  I hope the Tanzanians found our time informative; I learned a lot.

 Click for Part I, Part II, and Part III of Antitrust Lessons in Africa.

Vol. 7:  Out of Africa Along the road, I see a country returning to subsistence farming of small hard scrabble patches of earth beside mud huts unimproved for decades.  There are also larger fields of sisal: a fiber that has been largely replaced by nylon as the raw material for rope.  Conversely, in a nod to bad modernity, there are lots of big U.S. style gas stations under construction – more than you would suppose.  My hypothetical to the Technocrats has unwitting currency. The further east we return, the heavier the traffic.  Cars and buses pass on this two lane road by going out into oncoming traffic or passing on the outside shoulder as people scramble out of the way.  Several hours outside of Dar, we come upon a head on collision between a Dala-Dala (minibus) and a car.  Passengers hobble stunned out of the minibus and lie by the side of road.  A crowd forms of the curious, people trying to help and boys hawking drinks and food to the curious and the injured.  Annand finds an opening and we go on. Road travel is yet another real concern in Tanzania.  According to the Colonel, this is one of the good roads.  Nevertheless, I surmise there is no hospital within hours on this clogged road, no medical helicopter, and no safe supply of blood if you ever get medical help.  (Coincidentally, an international conference on road safety convenes this very week in Dar, claiming more deaths in road accidents in Africa than from malaria.  I doubt the comparative count, but not the severity of the problem.) A half an hour later, we hear sirens.  I expect to see ambulances, but instead it is a motorcade.  “This is the President, Jakaya Kikwete going from Dar to Dodoma (the capital)” Annand tells me.  Once popular, Kikwete’s approval is reportedly declining fast as inflation spikes above 16% and people struggle to meet basic needs.  Everyone pulls off to the side to let the motorcade pass.