Insecurity prompts Zanzibar to review its lucrative island leasing

Insecurity prompts Zanzibar to review its lucrative island leasing

The Tanzanian central government is planning to boost its security presence in the Zanzibar archipelago and in recent months has struck security cooperation deals with India and Mozambique.

A commission tasked with auditing the country’s security forces was appointed in July by President Samia Suluhu Hassan. It says it is concerned about the situation in the country’s Indian Ocean islands that are under the control of the semi-autonomous Zanzibar local government.

The commission, chaired by the former chief justice Mohamed Chande Othman, is made up of a 12-member team assisted by a five-person secretariat charged with investigating the security sector.

The Tanzanian leader was informed of an increase in the circulation of weapons and drugs in the region and asked the police to create a special police zone in the archipelago, a mechanism that allows for an increased security presence.

Island leasing may be threatened

Zanzibar sources confirm the growing need for better security on the archipelago’s fifty or so islands and islets. This responsibility falls to the Tanzanian central government based in Dodoma. Sources close to the interior ministry say that if it does not get more surveillance and intervention resources, the local government, called the Zanzibar Assembly, could be forced to review its plans to lease some islands to private individuals.

A similar project was envisaged in the 1960s but was cancelled due to the same security concerns.

The Zanzibar Investment Promotion Authority (ZIPA) early this year put nine islands, ranging in size from several dozen to several hundred hectares, on the rental market for investors from the fisheries, tourism and hydrocarbon exploration sectors. The leasing of a dozen islands last year attracted around $261m in foreign investment. Some of the islands have exclusive maritime zones which require an active security policy, but some Zanzibar Assembly members doubt that the national government is capable of providing this.

Foreign security partners

The central government is however taking steps to boost its security capacity. Defence Minister Stergomena Lawrence Tax last month travelled to New Delhi to meet her Indian counterpart Rajnath Singh, with whom she agreed to form a bilateral task force to strengthen the partnership between the two countries’ armed forces. India’s deputy national security adviser Vikram Misri had already visited Tanzania in May to offer his country’s assistance in maritime security.

A Tanzanian delegation is also expected to visit India this month to participate in an India-Africa security forum.

Faced with the growing activities of jihadist groups in the north of neighbouring Mozambique, Suluhu also travelled to Maputo in late September to sign agreements with President Filipe Nyusi on defence cooperation and counter-terrorism. On the sidelines of this month’s United Nations General Assembly in New York, the East African Community also asked the African Union for greater support in the area of maritime security.

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