Getting materials into Tanzania

Hi all,
I am curious what help the Tanzania government provides for external people volunteering to help in educational tasks. Is there a special visa for volunteering, and any help with getting electronic items to schools? Last time I carried some donated materials over, I had to pay a hefty duty charge in dollars.

cheers,
C

Hi,

Unfortunately the African countries make a big play about children’s education but don’t live up their rhetoric.

My charity has had to pay a hefty customs duty and VAT to get Raspberry Pis into Kenya over the last 4 years and despite the commitments of various politicians we have never succeeded without paying this hefty penalty.

Politicians need to walk the talk and most annoyingly they are letting their own kids down.

Keep up the good work and you never know these politicians will one day grow up to support their own citizens.

Regards

Harpal

Thanks for the reply. I would like to know more about what restrictions there are on what you can bring into Tanzania - both officially and ‘anecdotally’.

I noticed bringing in multiple laptops last time was not a problem. They were MS Surface Pros, quite tablet like in nature, so I could stack 5 of them side by side in my rucksack, and that was fine.

What was not fine, was the carrying of Power supplies and docking stations (for the SP4 this is actually another brick similar to the power supply brick, so still quite compact). 10 such bricks in my main bag was too much, on this I got duty of $100, which somehow increased from the office to the cash desk to a slightly larger figure (different story, at least the official had the decency to look embarrassed).

I now want to bring some tablets since the school doesn’t have any hardware to read the RACHEL content. I was thinking about some cheap Amazon Fire’s or similar - anyone have any ideas that wont lose my limited private funds in duty? :slight_smile:

Actually realised Fire tablets have advertising content, to keep them cheap, so may not be suitable. I will check the forum and raise another thread for this.