Karim F Hirji

Introduction 

Philanthropy

A fine performance in secondary school landed him at the University of Dar es Salaam (UDSM) in July 1969. That was where I met him. Inspired by Mwalimu Nyerere, he had come imbued the spirit of Pan-Africanism and socialism.

In 1970, Tanzania had one public university with less than three thousand students. Now it has some fifty public and private universities and university colleges with a total student population of around two hundred thousand. Much of this growth has occurred in the past twenty years.

You shop in Dar es Salaam at your own risk. Purchase a `quality’ light bulb at a stiff sum; three days later, it goes `poop.’ Get breakfast cereal in an attractive box; inside you find coarse, odd tasting stuff, and perhaps, a crawly bug or two.

The academic staff at the University of Dar es Salaam (UDSM) in the 1960s reflected a spectrum of ideological orientations – unabashed right wing Cold Warriors, eclectic liberals, traditionalists claiming disdain from politics, African socialists, Fabian socialists, Pan-Africanists and Marxists o