Lesson's from our Neighbour's to the North

I often ask myself, how it is that two neighbouring countries can be so far apart in terms of development.  Take Tanzania and kenya for example, both countries achieved independence at more or less the same time, with Kenya gaining it on 12 December 1963 and Tanzania 9 December 1961.  They both have a similar population number, Kenya 32M & Tanzania 36M,  both have ample natural resources and tourist attractions with Tanzania arguably slightly ahead in terms of natural beauty (of course I'm not biased at the slightest) and yet Kenya is on average ranked 3 (Kenya placed 80 and Tanzania 83 when averaged over the IMF, World Bank and CIA fact book rankings) places above Tanzania in the "Rich list".  The GDP is one of the primary indicators used to gauge the health of a countries economy, to make it simple to understand, just think of it as the size of the countries economy.

In my opinion, to get the true extent of a countries wealth, more indicators would have to be considered, but the gist of the issue is that Kenya is miles ahead of Tanzania in terms of Education, Health Care and Standard of living in general to name but a few.

For instance, on the news recently there was an article on how, a confidential helpline launched in the past two years has unearthed the real extent of sex abuse by teachers on students in their care.  More than 1,000 teachers in Kenya have been sacked in the last two years for sexually abusing girls, with most of the cases occurring in rural primary schools.  In one primary school there were more than 20 girls pregnant, with majority of them being impregnated by their teachers!  What's really sad is that even after the culprits were identified, not all of them faced prosecution, while some managed to escape imprisonment by paying off their victims parents.  I wonder what price these so called parents placed on their daughters chastity!  I mean thats ridiculous, I would make sure the idiot faced the full consequences of his actions from the authorities, that is if I don't catch him myself first.

My question is, why can't we learn from our neighbours and implement something like this in Tanzania. We can't wait on the government to implement everything, why aren't there NGO's who focus on such matters?  There's numerous cases of abuse that go unchecked and having something as simple as a confidential helpline (preferable free of charge or at a substantially reduced rate) could do wonders.  I've also read extensively on the abuse suffered by domestic workers, there have been numerous calls to have them unionised, but nothing seems to have developed on that front.  Is it merely because these things are so common place that it is considered part and parcel of the job?  Does no one care or are there more important issues that need the peoples more immediate attention?  Someone please help me to understand.   Kudos to kenya in the fight against child abuse.