Background

The CEO Roundtable is a policy dialogue forum that brings together CEOs of approximately 40 of the top 50 companies doing business in Tanzania. The members of the Roundtable and the companies they lead account for more than 40% of the tax revenue collected by the Government of Tanzania.

From the beginning when the idea of a Roundtable was first conceived by a small group of CEOs sometime in 2000; the objective was to create a forum through which the captains of industry, commerce and agriculture in Tanzania could constructively engage the Government, its development partners and other stakeholders with a view to creating a more conducive environment for business to prosper and for the country to develop in an atmosphere of peace and tranquillity.

This came about as the founders of the Roundtable realized that Tanzania as a nation was still learning to work in a tumultuous and fast changing world characterized by globalization, democratization and civil unrest almost everywhere you look. They realized that much as there was political will on the part of the Government to allow the private sector to lead the economic development process, the multitude of Tanzanians who continue to wallow in abject poverty were still vulnerable to political demagogues and rabble rousers who could exploit their condition to roll back the economic and political gains of the past two decades since Tanzania formally embarked on the path of reform.

As a way of exercising positive influence on government policy, the Roundtable leadership at the time organized regular meetings of the leading CEOs numbering about 25 during the early days and during these meetings, a dialogue ensued among the CEOs aimed at identifying the key obstacles to economic growth. The idea here was to work out solutions to the problem and discuss these solutions with the
Government in the spirit of partnership.