Local autonomy and citizen participation in Tanzania: from a local government reform perspective

This report analyses data on local autonomy and citizen participation from six case councils in Tanzania, for the period 2000-2004.The data covers citizen’s perceptions of their involvement in the planning process; the perceptions of council staff of citizens involvement in planning, as this has a bearing on the willingness of local government bureaucrats to involve their citizens in local governance; and the perceptions of elected leaders/councillors of citizen involvement in local governance. The key themes discussed include:

• good governance – the existence of democratic norms accepted and nurtured by the citizens and their governments
• accountability and transparency of local leaders to the community – particularly with regard to the collection and use of council finances
• local government autonomy and citizen participation – giving local authorities more autonomy to make decisions regarding the welfare of citizens in their localities
• bottom-up planning – citizen participation in decision-making in their respective localities
• participation in local elections

The report finds:

• the key objective of decentralisation - to increase citizen participation in planning and implementation of development activities at the local level - is yet to be realised
• the major governance problem in the six case councils was the lack of enough citizen involvement in formulating council plans
• current local government reform in the six case councils has not worked well enough to promote local autonomy at the grassroots level
• lack of a clear mechanism for accountability of local government bureaucrats to their councils
• reforms have so far not been able to empower local communities to respond to the cases of lack of voice and power in their respective localities

This undermines the ability of the councils to improve the welfare of the people as envisioned under the local government reform programme. The report suggests that for effective participatory planning at the local level the central government needs to devolve real decision-making power to elected councillors.The concept of local government autonomy will only make sense when local authorities have independent and reliable sources of income.