IT could be hard to be precise in gauging – and explaining – how well we have been doing as a nation in projecting our public or international image.

This includes how easy it is for local stakeholders to find sufficient uptake when economic diplomacy efforts bear fruit and what it implies for those charged with conducting the diplomacy.

In can be disheartening if efforts are made to invite some vital players in a particular sector into the country, and regulators or other agencies show little or no enthusiasm for what is envisaged or for matters that ought to have been resolved well before implementation begins.

Looking at the record over the past five or so years, it can be said that the situation is more intensive now than earlier, partly owing to the changing facets of international relations and consequently what other countries expect from Africa or from Tanzania in particular.

On the contrary, the strategic positions of African states have remained much the same, and in a way Tanzania has been a noted reflection of those positions, with our experts leading African Union experts’ negotiations for the latest global conference on climate change financing.

While much of the rest of the world could be busy sorting out where to do reciprocal business and on the specific terms, Africa is pushing for a new global financial architecture – but largely with little success.

It is true that there are ways in which the continent has changed, and in a way it is indeed changing quite fast. But as is much the case in internal policies, these aspects are either taken for granted or comprehended more or less as indulgences.

One could afford to sum it up as a permissive sort of situation where less than noticeable or effective enough action is taken. 

These are among the real economic drivers in the wider environment, the sort of openings which ought to be worked upon and organised at a deeper level for effect, but no results are noticed.

The reason is that our public regulatory posture in particular is anchored with interests of the public sector as national interests, and thus we seek financing whose ‘architecture’ is modelled that way.

The position expressed by those entrusted with the country’s diplomacy is accordingly only true up to a point, as the reluctance or outright failure on the part of stakeholders to use openings provided by economic diplomacy is basically at the public sector level, while the private sector is awash with initiative.

Reports indicate there is a growing Tanzanian Diaspora in China, apart from its own presence here, and regular trips to China are no longer a break with the ordinary.

Diaspora transfers for investment in public entities are meanwhile fairly limited, while there is an avalanche of private deposit flows, etc.

There is a case to ask for greater effort from public sector entities to take up initiatives commenced in economic diplomacy but it’s merely an option, and probably a “distant” one.