Mtwara or Lindi: Oil and Gas in
Constructing Rival Port Cities

Chambi Chachage

Mtwara is booming and buzzing. It was not like this
seven years ago when I first saw the town. Why such a dramatic change? The
answer seemed to be crystal clear: oil and gas.

Even the richest man in Africa, hailing from an oil
producing country, is also frequently visiting Mtwara. He is constructing a
cement plant named after him – Dangote
Industries (Tanzania) Limited. No wonder roads are being paved and hotels
are getting upgraded.

As my childhood friend, who moved there, has aptly put
it in the title of his blog, Mtwara Kumekucha. But,
surprisingly, I hardly saw any significant change at the old port. Why?

Sitting at the famous Bandari Club, itself a far cry from the glory of its good olden
days, I lazily watched its workers play Bao
and wondered what is happening. I then asked one of them if Mtwara has already
started to benefit from gas discovery and oil prospecting.

His answer was brief: “No, not yet.” What about all
the changes that we are seeing, I kept enquiring. He didn’t seem amused. Then,
disturbingly, he suddenly gave me an elaborate explanation: “We cannot really
tell until oil is found!” And constructing a port, I quipped.

For him my question deserved a contextual analysis. He
started explaining how far the place where they were prospecting for oil is –
somewhere near Mozambique and the Comoros. By way of triangulating, I vaguely
recalled, in my mental map coupled with its faulty memory, an exploration
activity map from the Tanzania Petroleum Development Corporation (TPDC)
that I had seen before and found his premise sound. “So,” he argued, “they may find
it reasonable to locate a port somewhere closer, i.e., not Mtwara!”

Lindi came up as a potential port. I mentioned Kilwa.
But he affirmed that even that is in Lindi. Another worker mentioned another
site in Mtwara yet no one knew where exactly the new port would be constructed.
Interestingly, later on someone who had encountered some oil prospectors
alleged that there is an agreement among them on where to build it.

Two months down the line that conversation lingers in
my head. Then I stumble on the writings of a visitor who observed these places
on the eve and dawn of independence in 1961. In her colonial travelogue on Tanganyika:
Sail in the Wilderness, with a foreword by none other than Mwalimu
Julius Nyerere, Kathleen Stahl tells a tale of two rival ports.

The tale is so telling that it needs to be cited in
length: “The whole artificiality of the situation began when the decision was
taken in London by the British Government in 1947 to make Mtwara the groundnut
port instead of Lindi. Ten years later the Tanganyika government was still
enmeshed in the consequences of that decision, and the two ports were like
rival characters in a little drama not yet played out…As for the choice of the
port, Lindi offered many advantages. It was already an established seaport; it
was the provincial headquarters with all administrative services, and it had
the main road through the province starting in the port”. After all what was to
be shipped grew therein.

Stahl expounded: “The conflict between Lindi and
Mtwara was not at once apparent for the simple reason that while Mtwara was the
designated port, Lindi did the actual traffic. The only road running out Mtwara
was the 70 miles of bad winding coastal road to Lindi. Thus, even supposing
that it had been practicable to import through Mtwara all the vast tonnage of
equipment needed for the Nachingwea scheme all that could have then been done
was to send it up by road to Lindi and then 100 miles inland to the groundnut
area.”

“Moreover,” she noted, “owing to the nature of the
ground the new railway from Mtwara to Nachingwea could not be built as quickly,
by a margin of two years, as a railway from the head of Lindi creek to
Nachingwea. All the vast quantities of equipment and stores imported for the
groundnut scheme then went to Lindi…. It was a boom town as never before in its
history.” Karim Hirji who grew up there during that time also attests to this.

In his recent memoir on Growing
Up with Tanzania: Memories, Musings and Maths, he thus recalls and
analyzes what Aga Khan III, who had visited Lindi in 1946, had advised Ismailis:
“The advice to set up shop in the south likely had the nod of the British
rulers who were instituting a massive groundnuts production scheme in central
and southern Tanzania. It came with an influx of colonial officials, company
employees and their families. The Asians
were to be the middlemen for the European firms, and were as well expected to
establish the service infrastructure for colonial rule, thereby enabling the
European way of life to operate without too many glitches.”  By 1957 they totaled 1,800.

Hirji concludes: “The poorly conceived schemed failed
in a matter of years. The bulk of the European left, but the Asians stayed
behind. Groundnuts or not, their presence was vital for the import-export
structure to take root, expand geographically and flourish financially.” As
such they experienced the rivalry between Lindi and Mtwara port towns.

When the schemed failed by 1951 what it left, as Stahl
noted, were “the port of Lindi and the new railways from it, both in actual
working, and at Mtwara half a port and half a railway.” Hence “a decision had
to be made whether to carry on with Mtwara or to give it up and leave Lindi as
the port for the Southern Province.” Interestingly, “Mtwara won and it was
resolved to complete the port and railway on their original scale as planned.”

For Stahl, what followed after “was a case of killing
Lindi to give life to Mtwara. Every device was used to induce the trade of
Lindi to go over to Mtwara.” According to her, the “search” had “been for ways
and means to persuade the old-established thriving Asian commercial community
at Lindi to transplant itself and forsake the bright lights of the town, the
only bright lights in the province, and all its civil amenities, schools,
hospitals, cinema, sports club and telephone system, for the [then] virgin
marshy bush of Mtwara.”

To that end, she noted, in “1953 provincial
headquarters were removed from Lindi to Mtwara where a large new building had
been put up to house them.” The “failure of this gesture to arouse any
response”, Stahl conjectured, “may be regarded as disproving the old adage that
trade follows the flag.” Nevertheless, in “1954 the railway from Lindi to
Nachingwea was pulled up.”  That “same
year”, as Stahl noted, “saw a grand opening of Mtwara port and the railway connecting
it with Nachingwea…. By the end of the year it became apparent that losses
would be greater than expected on both the railway and the port since the
actual tonnages available were far less than had been imagined. The railway
services were [then] cut down to achieve economies and differential port rates
were introduced in order to make it cheaper for ships to use Mtwara rather than
Lindi.”

Then, Stahl thus concluded: “Finally in 1955 it was
decided that it was unnecessary to have two ports for the Southern Province and
that Lindi must go. As the coup de grace, the drastic decision was taken to
remove all lighterage and port facilities from Lindi.”  It is a decision that made her curious mind
wonder whether it “would give life to Mtwara.”

Her ‘iffy’ take on what might have happen thus remains
relevant to us today, notwithstanding their colonial clouding: “Had Mtwara
never been invented, Lindi would still be a booming port and the provincial
headquarters might be moving, not to Mtwara, but inland to Masasi, poised to
push the development of the [then] province farther west.”

The Southern
Question in Tanzania that tends to pit Dar es Salaam against Mtwara when it comes to oil and gas remains unresolved. However, in our quest
to resolve it let us not forget what we can term ‘the Southern Question within
the Southern Question’, i.e., that of the role of Lindi vis-à-vis Mtwara port city
in relation to oil and gas.