Public Lecture: Local Content and Tanzania's Industrial Development (Professor John Sutton)

On Tuesday 10th June 2014, IGC researcher John Sutton delivered the Bank of Tanzania’s Seventh Gilman Rutihinda Memorial Lecture, on the topic of “Gains from the Natural Gas: Local Content and Tanzania’s Industrial Development”. The lecture was chaired by Bank of Tanzania Governor Prof. Benno Ndulu, and was attended by over 150 stakeholders from the Bank of Tanzania, Government departments, civil society organisations, donors and the private sector.

John Sutton set out how integrating local industry into the supply chains of the oil and gas majors can be achieved – and how this process can significantly develop the capabilities of Tanzanian firms, improve the quality of their outputs, and create sustainable, high-quality jobs. He stressed that policy choices are crucial in ensuring these potential benefits are achieved. He also described how simple domestic content rules have been shown to fail across countries that have attempted to impose them – and how instead, the integration of local firms into oil and gas supply chains is a process that needs to be pro-actively managed, and requires appropriate institutional backing that is implemented early and effectively. As a key part of this, John Sutton set out the need for a Local Content Unit – staffed by a small, highly professional team that can liaise with multinational firms in a co-operative manner, and with a deep understanding of both local capabilities and the feasible modes of engagement of local firms in supply chains – and to put in place a fair, open process to recruit and train appropriate local companies.

This event was featured in The Citizen and Daily News.

The slides from John Sutton’s lecture are available to download below. A written summary and full recording of the lecture will be made available by the Bank of Tanzania in due course. For related previous IGC Tanzania work, see also John Sutton and Donath Olomi’s An Enterprise Map of Tanzania.