Participatory Approaches to Local Government Planning in Tanzania

District planning combines district-based, participatory and national planning processes. This brief and accompanying report explores the views and experiences of local government staff of this ‘hybrid’ planning model. The brief also summarises the financial, administrative, and political constraints to participatory planning, and by implication the resulting constraints upon Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) as a means […]

REPOA Annual Report 2005

During the first ten years of its existence, REPOA’s focus was on increasing the understanding of poverty, initially through the development of the capacity of researchers and conducting research activities. During the latter part of this period, REPOA’s activities expanded to facilitating policy dialogue and policy development. The demands of stakeholders had shown REPOA that […]

When bottom-up meets top-down

The limits of local participation in local government planning in Tanzania This report discusses issues that concern planning at district level as perceived by representatives of different districts in Tanzania. In the context of this report planning is taken as a process of choosing or making choices/priorities of interventions in pursuits of sustainable development in […]

Local Government Finances and Financial Management in Tanzania

Observations from Six Councils, 2002 – 2003 The major focus of the Formative Process Research Programme is to observe changes in local authorities in the provision of basic services to the public. Moreover, the research aims to analyse changes in local authorities’ capacity for financial management and revenue enhancement, and changes relating to governance, including […]

Poverty and Human Development Report 2005

As in the past, this Poverty and Human Development Report 2005 has been prepared under the auspices of the Research and Analysis Working Group of the poverty monitoring system. At the beginning of the fourth phase of Tanzania’s Government, the members of the RAWG hope that this report will provide a useful material with which […]

Poverty and Human Development Report 2005

This Poverty and Human Development Report 2005 is the third in a series produced by the Research and Analysis Working Group of the Government of Tanzania’s Poverty Monitoring System. This monitoring system aims to provide timely, reliable information about poverty levels and trends and the results of analyses of data concerning poverty in Tanzania. This […]

Social Protection: Assuring a Minimum Income for the Poorest in Tanzania

This report provides a review of one element of social protection in Tanzania. It examined, specifically, the dimension of social protection that deals with supporting household consumption/income through interventions at the level of the household and individual. This involved a review of poverty and vulnerability in Tanzania and of the expenditure and institutional arrangements of […]

New challenges for local government revenue enhancement

The recent rationalisation of local government taxes and, in particular, the abolishment of the development levy, imply that many district councils, in the short run, will lose 40-50 percent of their own generated revenues. This has raised concern among stakeholders at both the local and central levels that the financial autonomy of local authorities is […]

Domestic Water Supply: The Need for a Big Push

Accessibility to clean and safe water for every household has been seen for decades as a core element of basic needs and human rights. The Government of Tanzania (GoT) has endorsed the UN Millennium Development Goals, including the pledge to reduce by half by the year 2015 the proportion of people who do not have […]

Trust in Public Finance: Citizens’ Views on Taxation by Local Authorities in Tanzania

Part of the problem of raising local government revenues in Tanzania is persistent public resistance to paying, as evidenced by widespread tax evasion and non-payment of fees and charges. In the standard economic model of taxpayer behaviour, the perceived quality of the government does not influence the level of taxes remitted. The basic behavioural assumption […]

Low awareness amongst citizens of local government reforms

The overriding goal of the Local Government Reform (LGR) Programme is to improve public services to ordinary citizens. This reform programme appears to be one of the least known policy reforms in Tanzania. In this brief, we present the results from a comprehensive citizens’ survey of the LGR. This survey was conducted recently and identifies the […]