Josephine Philip Churk

The growth of loan defaults is alarming and critical in undermining the sustainability of the disabled loan programmes in Tanzania. This study investigates the implications of entrepreneurial experience on timely loan repayment among disabled loan borrowers in Chamwino District. The study specifically looks at the understanding of entrepreneurship on timely loan repayment and the impact of the loan process on timely loan repayment among disabled borrowers. The study uses an exploratory qualitative study guided by the empowerment theory. It employed in-depth unstructured interviews with 19 disabled people, where data saturation directed the qualitative sample size. Data from the interviews found that disabled loan borrowers have minimal entrepreneurship experience, which causes lender delays in loan repayment. In addition, the results also indicate a slow loan processing speed and minimal document verification speed, with both causing delays in loan repayment. The study is designed as an explorative qualitative study, thus limiting the generalisation of findings. The study recommends empowering disabled borrowers through education to improve loan repayment efficiency and overall financial well-being among them. It also suggests streamlined loan processing procedures integrated with information technology and simplified loan document requirements while ensuring prompt disbursement. The findings contribute to improving entrepreneurship knowledge for loan repayment practices among the disabled borrowers’ category in promoting their participation in economic activities in line with the Sustainable Development Goals of 2030.

For generations, women in Tanzania have been undermined economically despite efforts from the government, educational institutions, and non-governmental organizations. Besides all of them, the growth of digital communication is emerging, inseparable from transforming women’s empowerment economically, politically, and socially. However, how social media has empowered women financially as an aspect of economic empowerment remains understudied in Tanzania. This study assesses the role of social media in the digital economy to realize its contribution to women’s financial empowerment. Specifically, the study assesses the financial activities of women’s support groups through social media, examines how social media offer economic opportunities to women’s support groups and identify the challenges associated with social media women’s support groups. This study is qualitatively designed and employs in-depth interviews with leaders of women’s support groups in the city of Dodoma. The findings highlight the benefits of WhatsApp social media as a platform for digital economic practices, specifically in enhancing the performance of financial activities. The results also revealed a lack of binding principles among women’s support groups, making them fragile and affecting their growth and sustainability. The study recommends establishing government regulations that bind members who decide to help each other through social media sites. This practice ensures the sustainability of women’s financial groups and avoids online fraud thus, promote women’s financial empowerment and participation in the digital economy in Tanzania.

The current perspective of understanding development focuses on including all members of society participating in the growth process, primarily through digital technology. This paper examines social media for promoting inclusive growth in Tanzania. More specifically, the study aims to investigate the social media site that youth citizens widely use to discuss government economic issues for fostering inclusive growth, how youth citizens use the perceived widely used social media to participate in discussing government issues for inclusive growth, and how does the government encourage citizens’ use of social media to discuss government issues for inclusive growth. The study was conducted in Dodoma City and employed mixed research methods using survey and interview data collection methods. Findings show that youth citizens mainly prefer using WhatsApp social media to discuss economic issues to promote inclusive economic growth in the study area. The study also found that youth citizens in the study area use WhatsApp social media to spot government actions and voice their opinions for inclusive growth. The study concludes that WhatsApp social media is a gateway to accelerate inclusive growth in the study area. It suggests a networked digital policymaking framework to encourage citizens to openly discuss and publish government issues on social media without fear to accelerate inclusive growth in the country. Also, it suggests an established framework for collecting citizens’ opinions on social media for government decision-making practices to imply that citizens’ views are considered for inclusive growth in Tanzania.

Digital communication, especially social media interaction, has emerged as a key domain for civic debates specifically in urban areas of Tanzania. However, how policy-makers perceive these as opportunities for societal development is rarely assessed in research. This study will fill this gap through semi-structured interviews with policy-makers in Dar es Salaam and focus on assessing their perception of the role of social media in digital policy-making in society. Based on the study results, we suggest a new strategic approach for policy collaboration across African regions for building sustained policy capacity and to enable resilient public spheres as a core component of societal development in digital Africa.