ABSTRACT
Jakaya Mrisho Kikwete was to be a government minister for a long period, including under Mkapa during the whole of the third president’s two terms, as he became uninterruptedly minister of foreign affairs and international cooperation of Tanzania. As a result of the difference between the social characteristics of Zanzibar and those of mainland Tanganyika, political developments in the islands which form part of Tanzania has been a source of difficulties in the political process of the whole country. The kind of open support from Tanzania for decolonisation under Nyerere was no longer the order of the day, given the complex and contradictory policies taken by the states of the region and probably because of the impact of ‘economic liberalisation trends’ in most of the countries and in Tanzania. For Kikwete, the question was whether or when Tanzania would become independent but what would be the character and extent of social and economic progress in Tanzania as an independent country.
