Tanzania – Unsanitary Urban Slums Worrisome

A GROUP of housing development officials from English speaking nations in Africa, including Tanzania, were told early this week that they should now discard a British colonial housing law that was enacted in 1947, because it generates slums in urban centres.

A director at the Centre for the Study of African Economies at the University of Oxford in the UK, Prof Paul Collier, told the officials that the Town and County Planning Act of 1947, which was enacted by the British Parliament in 1947 was no longer useful. The professor said that this outdated legislation should now be thrown out because it no longer works to the advantage of people who live in cities, municipalities and towns.