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 a book from the Institute of Development Studies uses evidence from Tanzania to question current approaches to development learning and to warn of the dangers of the frequent introduction of new agendas.

Tanzania was one of the first countries to eagerly embrace the PRSP process. The consequence of the rushed decision has not helped poor people. Major development actors such as donors and national governments have failed to learn from the lessons of their organisational pasts. Notions of ‘partnership’ and ‘participation’ are used frequently while strategising but not practiced in reality.

The researcher describes a project which was discontinued due to changing approaches. A donor wanting a project to tackle child labour approached the International Labour Organization (ILO). An elaborate baseline study took three years due to bureaucratic delays and personal and ideological differences. Communities awaiting start-up funds were shocked when the project was abruptly abandoned, projects were declared to be old-fashioned and the donor decided to instead support the PRSP process.

Another project aimed to develop local capacity to through managing a wetland. The first phase went well. Communities were empowered to develop plans and settle disputes and the project influenced national natural resources policy. After a positive evaluation, all those who were involved in the project were confident of further funding but were surprised when the donor stopped the process for a year before withdrawing and directing aid to the national government.

Uncomfortable realities of the aid experience are that:

• However much particular organisations stress their long-term commitment to such goals as poverty elimination, their objectives are short-term and results oriented.
• Projects have a life-span of two to five years: expatriate staff move on and are replaced by people with new priorities and approaches.
• Development agencies are ultimately accountable not to local people but to taxpayers and politicians in the donor countries and are under enormous pressure to deliver quick results.

Finnaid (Finland) supported a programme to construct boreholes and dams which, offers an example of good practice. Because the donor continued to fund the project for the past fourteen years it has been possible to learn from mistakes, to develop a participatory work culture, to share experiences and for government and donor staff to shed their role as professional experts and learn to be more involved in facilitating and negotiating.

The author urges development practitioners to:

• enter into a long-term ethical commitment to the communities in which they work
• be consistent in approaches and commitment to working with people and building relationships
• work to break down the power relations between donors and recipients.

Structural adjustment required governments to cut back on social spending, thus opening the way for donors to fund local-level projects to ensure that basic health and education services survived. Donors are now cutting these funds and returning responsibilities to national governments. The development community has a tendency to keep experimenting with new approaches but it is now time to slow down and reflect. We need to learn from the lessons of structural adjustment policies and their predecessors. Erratic, short-term adoption of latest trends will never achieve the long-term goal of poverty alleviation.

Source(s):
‘Questioning, learning and ‘cutting edge’ agendas: some thoughts from Tanzania’ in ‘Inclusive aid: changing power and relationships in international development’, edited by Leslie Groves and Rachel Hinton, Earthscan, Institute of Development Studies, by Leslie Groves, 2004 Full document.

Funded by: Department for International Development, UK

id21 Research Highlight: 21 November 2004

Further Information:
Leslie Groves
Social Development/ Child Rights Consultant
10 (2F3) Lochrin Buildings
Edinburgh EH3 9NB
United Kingdom

Tel: +44 (0) 131 466 2478
Contact the contributor: lesliegroves@yahoo.com

Institute of Development Studies (IDS), UK

Other related links:
'Innovation and progress? The Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper process in Tanzania'

'Has the aid industry disempowered Tanzanian pastoralists?'

'Young, poor and sick: socioeconomic inequities and child health in rural Tanzania'

'Voices of the stigmatised: listening to the street children of Tanzania'

'New modalities for educational aid' from ELDIS

'Merging in the circle' from ELDIS

'New solution? Can a sectoral approach to education meet international targets?' from ELDIS