Gas cars and fast buses in Dar es Salaam

From 25 May to 5 June I was in Dar es Salaam for a training on the back end of the East African Community's harmonised CPI system, which the EAC Secretariat organised. The statistics offices of Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania and Zanzibar compute inflation on it, and the EAC plans to take it to the other partner states.

Kola Technologies built the first version, and I inherited their code. ICT staff from the four offices spent the two weeks learning to run and change it. Along the way we logged 22 inconsistencies, and I fixed most of them between sessions. The worst let a half-collected month drag the national index toward zero. The training material now lives on a documentation site.

Cars that run on gas

Dar surprised me twice. The first was gas. Many cars there run on compressed natural gas from Tanzania's own fields, with a cylinder in the boot, and a kilogram costs well under half of what a litre of petrol does. At home, the conflict in the Middle East had pushed fuel prices up and left some Kampala pumps dry.

A bus that works

The second was the mwendokasi, Dar's rapid transit buses. They run in their own lanes down the middle of the main roads, and they keep moving while the traffic beside them sits still. You pay with a tap card at raised stations. I expected a showpiece and found a service people use every day. Kampala has planned a line like it for years, and I'd like to see one built.