The United States (US) has signed a memorandum of understanding with Tanzania to invest more than $1.3 billion in its health sector over the next five years, the latest in a series of deals that have caused controversy in some African countries.
The agreement, signed late on Wednesday, is similar to those struck with countries including Rwanda, Kenya, and Uganda under US President Donald Trump’s “America First Global Health Strategy”, designed to make poorer nations more self-reliant as the US has dismantled foreign aid programmes.
In some countries the pacts have run into resistance over concerns about conditions like allowing access to minerals and sharing personal health data and bio materials.
Zambia has rejected demands that such a deal be tied to US access to Zambian minerals while in Kenya a court in December suspended part of its deal until it hears a data privacy case filed by a consumer protection group.
Tanzanian Health Minister Mohamed Mchengerwa said the agreement did not include the sharing of laboratory samples with the US.
“We did not enter into a specimen-sharing agreement,” Mchengerwa said during the signing ceremony, according to a video on the Health Ministry’s Instagram account.
“Tanzania’s specimens including those of outbreak, epidemic and pandemics potential will be tested, stored and governed here in Tanzania,” he said.
–Reuters–
