John Magufuli

John Pombe Joseph Magufuli was a chemistry and mathematics teacher with a doctorate in chemistry, and spent almost twenty years as a minister — most of them at works, where the roads he built earned him the nickname the Bulldozer — before winning the presidency in 2015 as a compromise candidate few had expected to be nominated.

He began by making frugality theatre. He cancelled the independence day celebrations and put the money into a street clean-up he joined himself, cut the budget for a parliamentary banquet by more than ninety per cent and sent the difference to a hospital, banned non-essential foreign travel for officials, and struck tens of thousands of ghost workers off a payroll that had been paying salaries to the dead. Government revenue collection rose sharply.

He then took on the mining companies. After commissioning inquiries that found gold exports had been systematically under-declared, he imposed a multi-billion-dollar demand on Acacia Mining and forced a renegotiation that gave Tanzania a sixteen per cent free stake in the mines and half the economic benefits, and pushed through a law asserting permanent sovereignty over natural resources. Other African governments watched it closely.

The construction was on a scale Tanzania had not attempted: the standard gauge railway from Dar es Salaam inland, the Julius Nyerere hydropower dam on the Rufiji, a revived national airline, rural electrification and free basic schooling. Growth stayed strong and he was genuinely popular with many Tanzanians who felt the state was finally working for them. He died in office in March 2021.