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    Local governance in Tanzania: Observations from six councils 2002-2003
    (Mkuki na Nyota Publishers Ltd, 2007) Chaligha, Amon; Henjewele, Florida; Kessy, Ambrose; Mwambe, Geoffrey
    Governance entails participation, transparency, efficiency and equity in the management of people and their economy in a given country. Governance comprises the mechanisms, processes and institutions, through which citizens and groups articulate their interests, exercise their legal rights, meet their obligations and mediate their differences. Local governance refers to the way a local authority fulfils its responsibilities towards the citizens in their areas of jurisdiction. It covers relationships between local authority leaders and the citizens, as well as political parties and non-governmental organisations, and the central government in all phases of formulating policies that affect people in carrying out their daily activities. In this study, several political and administrative dimensions of governance are discussed. First is the issue of Local Government Autonomy. Here, an attempt was made to answer the question: To what extent are the local authorities free to make political decisions within the Tanzanian polity? It is recognised that the local government reforms has opened the way for multi-level planning systems and new, non-hierarchical forms of inter-ministerial coordination. However, while the decentralisation reform has set the stage for participatory local planning practices, it is by no means guaranteeing them. Improved trust relations, citizens’ rights, reduced corruption, participation in local elections and gender mainstreaming are important governance issues that are also discussed in this study.
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    Local government reforms in Tanzania: Bridging the gap between theory and practice
    (TUKI Publishers, 2011) Kessy, Ambrose T.
    For the last four decades, Tanzania has been involved in a number of comprehensive public sector reforms focusing on decentralization as a major tool for improving social services delivery. Assessing how and what has changed in each phase of the local government reforms may be a difficult task to resolve. There are two major problems: first, it may not be easy to construct some reliable variables 'before' and 'after' a reform; and second, reform is associated with issues of change and given the complexity of local governments' interactions with various sectoral policies, to single out a particular issue as an outcome of a reform is difficult (Stoker,1999). However, taking these challenges together, one may still find some ways of assessing the impact of local government reforms in Tanzania by focusing on establishment, purpose, composition, source of revenue and responsibilities. These five key issues are investigated through the prism of central-local relations (local autonomy). One principal argument about the success of any decentralization measure is whether it is able to facilitate more citizens' participation, local autonomy, accountability, transparency and effective service delivery (Visser, 2009; Crook and Manor, 1998; Cheema and Rondinelli~1983; Olowu and Wunsch, 2004). This chapter argues that this common rhetoric among academics, development partners, government leaders and local politicians needs to be reconsidered. The image is always of an inexorable movement from central to local. While this may sound good, the real challenge is about what is being said on the policy documents and what is being done the ground. As it is discussed later in this chapter, the experience of decentralization in Tanzania for the last four decades shows some mixed results with regard to mooting the stated goals. This chapter seeks to clarify some of these challenges and tries to suggest how the gap between the rhetoric and reality of decentralization and local governance could be managed. The chapter is organized as follows: the first part provides a schematic model of the life cycle of decentralization which show an idealized process of decentralization and the actual process from the field. The second part draw some experiences of central-local relations from both developed and developing countries by focusing on the legal status of local movements in the national constitutions. The third part provides a broad overview of the development of the local government system in Tanzania before and after independence, by attempting to assess the impact of various reform initiatives so far implemented on the status, functions and re ponsibil.iti.es of local governments. The fourth part discusses the challenges of local government reform~ in Tanzania by trying to find out why decentralization in Tanzania has only been partial. The fifth part outlines some recommendations for the current LGRP II followed by a conclusion.
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    Food security: the Tanzanian case
    (International Institute for Sustainable Development, 2011) Mwakalobo, Adam; Kiratu, Sheila; Märker, Lutz
    This paper investigates the impact of the 2007–08 international food crisis on Tanzania and assesses the extent to which both the country’s long-term and short-term policies helped mitigate the effects of the crisis on its society and economy. Using household-level data from a budget survey, we estimate that 0.5–1 per cent of the population, mostly clustered in urban regions, was driven into poverty by the crisis, as measured by the national poverty line, rendering the crisis less severe than in many other countries. There is no clear evidence that short-term policies helped alleviate these effects, whereas some success can be attributed to Tanzania’s economic reforms since the early 2000s, which enabled it to export some of its food to its neighbouring countries. A major challenge, however, remains that of increasing productivity and stabilizing output growth.
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    The Kilosa district REDD+ pilot project, Tanzania. a socio-economic baseline study
    (The International Institute for Environment and Development (UK), 2013) Kajembe, George C.; Silayo, Dos Santos A.; Mwakalobo, Adam B.S.; Mutabazi, Khamaldin
    Tanzania has decided to embark upon a national REDD programme to meet its obligations of managing its forests sustainably while responding to poverty reduction initiatives. As part of the REDD Readiness phase, nine pilot projects are being carried out in different areas of the country to draw lessons to assist in structuring a successful REDD+ in the future. The social and economic data of the costs and benefits of deforestation, forest degradation and emissions avoidance captured by this research programme will help in the development of the REDD+ policy and framework. This study was conducted in Kilosa District where the Tanzania Forest Conservation Group (TFCG), in collaboration with Tanzania Community Forest Conservation Network (MJUMITA), are implementing one of the pilots. The pilot aims to rehabilitate extensively threatened open access forests (on what is termed ‘general land’) by preparing proper land-use plans and setting Participatory Forestry Management (PFM) models in villages where this approach has never been practised. Five villages, three from the 16 villages in the designated pilot area and two villages that were chosen as controls, were selected for this study. Sixty questionnaires were administered in each village, and focus group discussions and resource person interviews conducted in each village to supplement information collected through the surveys. Results showed that more than 80 per cent of people in Kilosa depend on agriculture and forestbased resources for their livelihoods. Uses of the forest include harvesting wood for charcoal, firewood and timber, as well as a variety of non timber forest products (NTFPs). Unsustainable extraction contributes to degradation of forests in the area. As is the case in many areas in Tanzania, fuelwood is a major source of energy for cooking in the study villages with about 86 per cent of it being collected from forests around the household landscapes. Results further showed that although REDD+ is a new initiative in this area, 75 per cent of the people are aware of what REDD+ entails although they have contradictory perceptions of the ability of these initiatives to curb forest degradation. Results also showed that nearly the same proportion have an understanding of the role of forests in mitigating climate change, which indicates that the pilots’ awareness campaigns had a positive effect. Despite this achievement, however, 92 per cent of the people have not changed their attitudes regarding forest use. The analysis of the REDD architecture and payment mechanisms showed that both the government and the piloting NGOs are in favour of integrating Participatory Forestry Management (PFM) models – Community Based Forest Management (CBFM) on village land and Joint Forest Management (JFM) on state land – into REDD+. Such an approach avoids the establishment of parallel structures in natural resource management that would imply high transaction costs. But little has been achieved with respect to land-use planning and the introduction of PFM. The process of preparing and approving land-use plans is very time consuming and resource intensive. As a result, it has delayed the introduction of PFM models in many pilot villages. On the other hand, the national REDD pilot NGOs have not yet decided on the forms of compensation or payments in return for reducing deforestation in the area – this is the case for all pilot projects in the country. The study found that people were positive about a range of different compensation possibilities, including direct payments. People also considered the issue to be ‘business-as-usual’, however, similar to the attempts to implement many other conservation programmes that have ended up offering few incentives to communities. The issue will be further explored through follow-up exercises involving choice experiments. Executive summary 2 REDD+ Country Reports The study team learnt that carbon tenure is not clear in Tanzanian policy, including a lack of clarity over whether rights to carbon revenues will follow rights governing forests. However, it is assumed that forests under Community-Based Forest Management (CBFM) are likely to offer better opportunities for community-level compensation under REDD, leading to the NGOs responsible for implementing the projects in the pilot area excluding state-owned forests. This approach can be considered destructive to state forests as these might then experience more encroachment and utilisation as a result of leakage. Therefore it is important that protected areas of different status, for example, nature reserves (national parks) and game reserves should be included under the National REDD+ framework. Preliminary analysis showed that compensating communities should be ‘result-based performance’ and that ‘result’ should be the amount of carbon. This observation was in line with the overriding concept of payments under REDD+, which are expected to be made only for changes that would not otherwise have taken place. This concept of ‘additionality’ is at the core of the REDD+ discussion and the development of international and national frameworks of REDD+ throughout the world. This mechanism is challenged, however, because many forest lands are left outside the project area, creating leakage possibilities. ‘Result-based’ also denies opportunities to communities with forests of high biodiversity value but low carbon value, which is the case for most Miombo forests, creating a serious challenge for the implementation of REDD+. Therefore funding REDD+ to enable practice-based compensation would probably be the most viable option.
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    Intergovernmental fiscal relations in Tanzania: Guidelines or directives?
    (Mkuki na Nyota Publishers Ltd, 2018) Mushi, Richard; Kessy, Ambrose
    As a unitary state, Tanzania has relied on intergovernmental fiscal regime to ensure that all LGAs equitably receive funding for execution of its mandates and responsibilities. Uncertainty in resource mobilization has hampered effective implementation of fiscal transfers to the LGAs. Intergovernmental fiscal resources are ring-fenced and leave limited discretion to LGAs to reallocate resources based on prevailing demands. Improvement in intergovernmental fiscal relations requires putting in place more effective mechanisms for allocating and disbursing resources between the central government and the LGAs. Decision making relating to intergovernmental fiscal allocation to LGAs often excludes the participation of LGAs.