Godfrey Mwakikagile - Early Years

Early Years

He attended primary school (up to Standard 4) at Kyimbila near the town of Tukuyu and middle school (up to Standard 8) at Mpuguso in Rungwe District in Mbeya Region in the Southern Highlands, secondary school (up to Standard 12 or Form IV) at Songea in Ruvuma Region, and high school (up to Standard 14 or Form VI) at Tambaza in Dar es Salaam.5

He once worked as a news reporter at the Standard, which was later renamed Daily News, and as an information officer at the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting in Tanzania's capital Dar es Salaam before going to school in the United States in November 1972.6

He first joined the editorial staff of the Standard as a junior reporter when he was still in high school, in Form V, in 1969.7

Coincidentally, his editor at the Daily News, Benjamin Mkapa, who also helped him to go to school in the United States, years later became president of Tanzania (1995–2005).8

The president of Tanzania during that period, Julius Nyerere who led the country from 1961 to 1985, was the editor-in-chief of the Daily News. But his role was only ceremonial rather than functional.

Godfrey Mwakikagile graduated from Wayne State University in Detroit in the state of Michigan, USA, in 1975. 9

He also attended Aquinas College, Grand Rapids, Michigan, in 1976. One of his professors of economics at Aquinas College was Kenneth Marin who once worked in Tanzania. 10

It was just a coincidence that he went to Aquinas College where he ended up being taught by someone who had worked in Tanzania years before. He did not know anything about Professor Marin before then and met him at that school for the first time.

Professor Marin once worked as an economist for the government of Tanzania in Dar es Salaam in the late sixties and early seventies. He went to Tanzania in 1968 and served as an adviser to the government on capital mobilisation and utilisation. Before then, he worked as an economist for the United States federal government. He was appointed by President Lyndon B. Johnson to serve on Wage and Price Control during the mid-sixties. President Johnson appointed Professor Kenneth Marin as a member of the White House Consumer Advisory Council. 11

In 1966, Professor Marin was a member of a U.S. State Department evaluation team that was assigned to review various performances in the economic and political arena in six South American countries. 12

Years later, one of his students, Godfrey Mwakikagile, also ended up writing about economics, among other subjects, mostly about Africa. And coincidentally, Mwakikagile's first book, Economic Development in Africa, was also about economics.13