DAR ES SALAAM, May 23 -- The Speech by the Minister for Works when presenting his proposed Budget to Parliament recently, struck a chord with me and my students of “Financing Infrastructure Development”, at Ardhi University.

The front-page headlines in the three English papers that I consulted, all dated 21st May were in unison. “Government now turns to bonds to finance key road projects”, “Infrastructure Bonds in offing”, wrote the Good Citizen and the Daily Blog, respectively. The Custodian had a hopeful note: “Expanding Major Roads can be done with Bonds”.

In the opening paragraph, the Custodians reporter had this to say: “The government is set to introduce infrastructure bonds as...