Tanzania – testing ground for new approaches in development?

Tanzania is highly dependent on donor aid. It has one of the highest proportions of donor aid to gross national product (GNP) of any developing country. In recent decades a number of new strategies – from structural adjustment to sector-wide approaches and poverty reduction strategy papers (PRSPs) – have been field-tested in Tanzania. Yet despite all these efforts at poverty alleviation and a huge donor presence, Tanzania has steadily slipped down the Human Development Index. Should donors pause to consider whether they need to stop trying new approaches and instead focus on long-term activities?

A chapter in abook from the Instituteof DevelopmentStudies uses evidence from Tanzania to question current approaches todevelopment learning and to warn of the dangers of the frequent introduction ofnew agendas.

Tanzania was one of the first countries to eagerly embrace the PRSP process. Theconsequence of the rushed decision has not helped poor people. Majordevelopment actors such as donors and national governments have failed to learnfrom the lessons of their organisational pasts. Notions of ‘partnership’ and‘participation’ are used frequently while strategising but not practiced inreality.

The researcherdescribes a project which was discontinued due to changing approaches. A donorwanting a project to tackle child labour approached the International LabourOrganization (ILO). An elaborate baseline study took three years due to bureaucraticdelays and personal and ideological differences. Communities awaiting start-upfunds were shocked when the project was abruptly abandoned, projects weredeclared to be old-fashioned and the donor decided to instead support the PRSPprocess.

Another projectaimed to develop local capacity to through managing a wetland. The first phasewent well. Communities were empowered to develop plans and settle disputes andthe project influenced national natural resources policy. After a positiveevaluation, all those who were involved in the project were confident offurther funding but were surprised when the donor stopped the process for ayear before withdrawing and directing aid to the national government.

Uncomfortablerealities of the aid experience are that:

• Howevermuch particular organisations stress their long-term commitment to such goalsas poverty elimination, their objectives are short-term and results oriented.
• Projectshave a life-span of two to five years: expatriate staff move on and are replacedby people with new priorities and approaches.
• Developmentagencies are ultimately accountable not to local people but to taxpayers andpoliticians in the donor countries and are under enormous pressure to deliver quick results.

Finnaid (Finland) supported a programme to constructboreholes and dams which, offers an example of good practice. Because the donorcontinued to fund the project for the past fourteen years it has been possibleto learn from mistakes, to develop a participatory work culture, to shareexperiences and for government and donor staff to shed their role asprofessional experts and learn to be more involved in facilitating andnegotiating.

The author urgesdevelopment practitioners to:

• enterinto a long-term ethical commitment to the communities in which they work
• beconsistent in approaches and commitment to working with people and buildingrelationships
• work to break downthe power relations between donors and recipients.

Structuraladjustment required governments to cut back on social spending, thus openingthe way for donors to fund local-level projects to ensure that basic health andeducation services survived. Donors are now cutting these funds and returningresponsibilities to national governments. The development community has atendency to keep experimenting with new approaches but it is now time to slowdown and reflect. We need to learn from the lessons of structural adjustmentpolicies and their predecessors. Erratic, short-term adoption of latest trendswill never achieve the long-term goal of poverty alleviation.