The Tanzanian President, Jakaya Kikwete, is in Canada this week on an official visit. This afternoon, after meeting with Prime Minister Stephen Harper, the two men took some questions from reporters. The press were allotted a total of four questions, two from each country’s press corps. The Canadian press corps gets further subdivided into one English-language question and one French-language question. Hélène Buzzetti of Le Devoir asked the French-language question, a question that was really only for Harper as it was about the Port of Montreal. The English-language reporters — CP, Bloomberg, Toronto Star, Reuters, Postmedia and Sun — came to a consensus that we wanted to ask Harper about the Nexen deal and I drew the straw to put the question to the PM. But, given that Tanzania also relies heavily on foreign investment to develop its resource sector, I thought it would be interesting to hear President Kikwete’s views on how Tanzania handles investment proposals from companies that originate in countries, like China, that do not share Tanzania’s democratic values. Continue reading So, President Kikwete, can you help us work through our Nexen problem?