TRANSPORT AND COMMUNICATION IN TANZANIA

The Importance of Transport in Tanzania Transportation is fundamental to the economic activity of exchange. Therefore, transport geography and economic geography are largely interrelated. At the most basic level, humans move and thus interact with each other by walking, but transportation geography typically studies more complex regional or global systems of transportation that include multiple interconnected modes like public transit, personal cars, bicycles, freight railroads, the Internet, airplanes and more. A)Source of employment: The transport employs many people in different fields. People are employed in the construction of infrastructures such as roads, railways, airports, ports, railway stations, and many other transport facilities. Yet a good number of East Africans are employed directly as drivers, conductors, pilots, cabin crew, captains of ships, mechanics, traffic controllers etc. These people are directly en gaged in the transportation business.By supporting other sectors, such as trade and commerce, it also offers employment to many other people. These people include those working in automobile manufacturing industries, petroleum production and sale, and manu facture of various products used in the transport sector. B)Promotes trade and commerce: The transport sector aids the movement of goods and services. As such it promotes trade and commerce by facilitating the movement of these tools of trade from production areas to consumers. C)Promotes unity and understanding: Transport enables people from different places or country to travel and interact. This improves understanding and unity between people of different ethnic groups within the country or people of different races and cultures from different countries. This helps to create a better understanding and it eliminates any enmity between or among different people. This has led to good relationship between and among different countries in the world. D)Facilitates exploitation of natural resources: A sound transport network linking areas with natural resources such as minerals, forests and water facilitates exploitation of these resources because they can be easily transported from their deposits or sources to consumers or to industries for processing. . E)Encourages the development of industries: Transportation encourages the development of other industries. For example, enhanced transport of agricultural produce from rural areas leads to growth of the primary industries such as food processing and lumbering industries. Similarly, access to mineral deposits by roads, railways etc encourages the development of mineral processing industries as these industries are assured of the availability of raw materials because of a well - developed transport system linking the deposits with industries. Also transport industry encourages the development of petroleum production and refinery so as to produce enough oil required for running vehicles, road construction machinery, and other machine s