Support for parliaments: Tanzania and beyond

After 30 years of one-party socialist rule, Tanzania embarked on a democratisation process in the early 1990s, along with a large number of other African countries. The 1995 elections were, however, the real constituent democratic presidential and parliamentary elections, which (re-) established the ruling party Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) as Tanzania’s dominant party. This report therefore, presents a short analysis of the Parliament of Tanzania which has only recently taken up its ‘checks and balances’ functions. The report proceeds to outline the multidonor parliament support rendered to the Tanzanian parliament, and to the parliaments of Zambia, Kenya, and Uganda, in order to compare and contrast the strengths and weaknesses of the different aid modalities.

The paper provides the following findings:

• Tanzania has for many years been characterised as the ‘darling’ of the international donor community. It is one of the African countries south of the Sahara that has received the most in development aid during the last 40 years, and close to 40 per cent of the budget (2008/09) is still funded by outside donors
  
• There now exists in a Kenya a vibrant parliament-focused civil society and a private sector community that have been providing policy analyses and support for legislative work
  
• Parliamentary support has lately been done through a joint donor basket fund of the Deepening Democracy Programme (DDP) in Uganda and donor efforts have largely shifted from infrastructure and institutional development to the demand side and the opposition
  
• Donor coordination is considered good in Zambia, largely because of the Joint Assistance Strategy for Zambia (JASZ) with twelve bilateral donors, international financing institutions, the European Commission and the United Nations. Under the JASZ, donors also coordinate regularly with the government.

Recommendations incldude:

• The parliamentary committees of oversight, scrutiny and control should be supported. In particular, the oversight and legislative functions need strengthening
  
• One possible vehicle for committee support would be to establish a fund based on the Ugandan model, where the donors have institutionalised an Expert Advisory Fund for Committees
  
• There should be a steering committee comprising a variety of interests represented in parliament, together with donor agency representatives and preferably also the presence of relevant government agencies and some NGOs and CSOs.