Mwalimu Nyerere Foundation

The Mwalimu Nyerere Foundation was established in 1996 by Mwalimu Nyerere to promote his legacy of peace, unity, and people-centered development. The foundation seeks to monitor public and private institutions and seek strategies to uphold his ideals of integrity, equality, and the rule of law in East Africa and beyond.

The Mwalimu Nyerere Foundation aims to build Africa's first presidential library and educational resource center while developing itself into the leading policy research institute in East Africa. The Foundation will serve as a crossroads between government, academia, and civil society, seeking effective solutions to ongoing problems and pursuing their implementation. As such the Foundation is something more than a think tank, but also a center for peace negotiation, citizen outreach, and political pressure.

It is this non-aligned engagement in the political process that sets the Mwalimu Nyerere Foundation apart from most other NGO's. The challenges for East Africa today are largely political in nature. An influential viewpoint that is independent of partisan politics is a necessary counterweight to the day-to-day struggle for power. Seeking to ensure the implementation of its proposals, the Foundation will enter into political dialogue, publicity campaigns, and targeted lobbying. By engaging in the political process, the Foundation will gain insights into the realities of creative policy-making and implementation in today's political environment, and measure success by real change. With its highly qualified board and the weight of Mwalimu Nyerere's reputation, the Mwalimu Nyerere Foundation is uniquely endowed to fulfill this role.

Upon opening the Foundation, with typical humility, Mwalimu Nyerere expressed his desire that his ideas be a source of inspiration for the future, but that his legacy also be considered critically in order to best understand the way forward.

"I hope that in studying my 'practices' people will be kind' but also honest. Tanzania can learn from my mistakes as well as from our aims and achievements."
- Mwalimu Julius K. Nyerere, Dar es Salaam, 1997

Julius Kambarage Nyerere was a Tanzanian politician who served as the first President of Tanzania and previously Tanganyika, from the country's founding in 1961 until his retirement in 1985.