Tanzania Newsletter September 2006

Editor: Information worker Lisbeth Jensen

Editor-in-chief: Director Flemming Winther Olsen

Letter from director

Implementation of the Local Government (LG) Reform Program is being followed with a lot of interest by many civil society organisations due to the simple fact that a lot of money will be flowing to Local Government Authorities (LGA) – notably to District Authorities. The Capital Development Grant and other block grants within health, education, agriculture and infrastructures will give the Districts much more say over allocation of funds and much more say over who is going to do what in both service delivery and capital investment. Like ants around a pot of sugar, potential beneficiaries of these new funds will seek to position themselves for the big party!
Civil Society Organisations (CSO) – including producer-, processors- and marketing organisations – must join the party! Not only because a party is always worth checking out but because CSOs have a very important role to play to ensure that the party does not develop into a closed party for the few to share all the cakes.

The CSOs must take upon them to create that popular participation and that transparency intended for in the LGA reform. Strong indications are that political structures at district level cannot carry that responsibility alone.
What should then be the role of CSOs in relation to the LG reform program?
What first seems to come to mind in many CSOs is to bid for service delivery contracts – supplementing the public service delivery machinery or competing with private sector service providers. That might be a justifiable line of action (although competing with private sector providers can be detrimental to long term development goals) – but no CSO should be satisfied with doing only that.
If the LG reform is to succeed, CSOs must become engaged in securing popular participation in all aspects of planning, implementation and monitoring of public funds at all local government levels.
Planning and implementation capacity varies a great deal from district to district but in general terms capacity is very low. That leaves a lot of room for poor allocation of resources and for strong influence by a few powerful individuals, being they executives or politicians. Too many are the cases where more than 50% of District Development Project budgets are eaten up by allowances and overhead costs to district officials.
CSOs must play an active role in securing the success of the Local Government Reform. They should actively participate in enhancing the knowledge about the reform program through civic educating of both local politicians (the counsellors), local communities and other key players like private sector. CSOs must further take upon them to build capacity in the various CSOs to enter into Public-Private-Partnership with district authorities and with private sector players. The Local Government Reform Program cannot succeed without both strong and competent district administrations, well informed and responsible Councils and strong and democratically governed CSOs.

New Secretary General

A new Secretary General for MS has been chosen by the MS Board. 52 year old Frans Mikael Jansen is an international development planner, manager, policy analyst and lobbyist with more than 20 years of experience.
Frans Mikael Jansen holds a bachelor in Public Administration, a Master of Science in International Development Studies from the University in Roskilde and a diploma as teacher.
He has worked as a teacher, as development worker for MS in Tanzania, as training and Assistant Project Manager in Danish Red Cross, as Director for a minor company (International Development Partners), in Ibis as Head of Project Department and later as Secretary General.
Frans Mikael Jansen is currently based in Kampala, Uganda, as Head of Programmes of Danida’s Governance Programme promoting Anti Corruption, Human Rights, Conflict Resolution and Democratisation, an assignment which terminates by the end of September.
He has considerable work experience in Africa, Asia, Central and South America

When being welcomed by the staff in Denmark on August 22, Frans Mikael mentioned four areas that are important for the work in the secretariat in Copenhagen: MS should work as a team capable of making a difference in the surrounding world; We should be professional and efficient; Commitment is important; and working in MS should be fun although we work with serious and important matters.
Frans Mikael Jansen will take up his new assignment as MS’ new Secretary General late September.
Frans Mikael Jansen is married with 3 children.

Democracy seminar at TCDC

At the end of August representatives from all MS countries and MS Copenhagen had a workshop at TCDC discussing “Democracy” as the headline for MS strategies.

To stimulate the discussion at the workshop guests from the three East African countries came to lecture about traditional conceptions of democracy.
The discussions clearly showed that the term “democracy” needs a lot of explanation, because different cultures and political environments understand it differently.
A task group has been set up in Copenhagen to develop a concept paper to make the new focus operational. Group members from the MS in the South are Director Flemming Olsen and a programme officer from Nepal.

Visit from Copenhagen

MS Tanzania enjoyed the visit of Lars Iskjaer from MS Copenhagen first week of September. He is a member of the programme management team and just now responsible for putting the “Democracy – focus” on operational form. Together with a small task group he has until November to make a concept paper to present to the board in Denmark and to the Policy Advisory Board in all MS countries.
And that is why he visited MS Tanzania. The new focus of MS Tanzania “Rural Livelihood – Rural development through popular participation” is the first elaborated strategy to incorporate “democracy” in an African context. The linking of livelihood and popular participation got his applause. That is also why Director Flemming Olsen has been appointed member of the task group.
Lars Iskjaer was impressed with the focus and the strategy to develop a Topic Team approach. He also visited a few partners in Dar es Salaam and Morogoro.

DW workshop

Last week all Development Workers (DWs) in MS Tanzania was assembled at Country Office for a training session.
The aim for these days, which will be held three to four times a year, is to discuss the MS programme, the Topic Team approach and continuously train the DWs on Tanzanian society and policy issues.
This session was the first, but everyone agreed, that it was successful and should be repeated.
The topics this time was the role as Agent of Change with a lecture from Director Flemming Olsen. Then Mr. Willy Kitima from Transparency International, Tanzania gave a lecture on the faces of corruption and how to deal with it. There was a briefing on the status of the work of our three Topic Teams, and a discussion on MS as a partner in fundraising activities.
The next training in December will be on the Local Government Reform.

Research project winners

The research fund as a special grant from MS Denmark to MS Tanzania will be used to conduct a workshop for all partners in how to use research as a tool in the work of their organisation. The workshop will be in October. Different tools of how to describe a research project will be taught as well as different kinds of research like surveys, base line studies etc.
But a part of the fund was set a side for the partners to actually conduct research.

Almost all MS partners send in projects to apply for the funds in the small research fund.
All proposals have been evaluated and the three winners announced.

Teachers Resource Centres Coalition got funding to do a survey of all the funding the members get from different donors, national as well as international. The aim is to create a database to help the members to access and lobby for better economical support for rural TRCs.
Legal Human Right Centre got funding to do a baseline survey of secondary schools in Arusha Region. By visiting and interviewing students at four schools in each district the study will show the amount of knowledge among the pupils on human rights and the need to set up Human Rights Clubs at the schools.
Morogoro Paralegals got funding to do a survey in two wards among the women. The aim is to see, if the information all ready brought to the two wards through paralegal advisors have changed the women’s life. The study will measure the level of property among women, the knowledge of their rights to property and inheritance and advices on what to do to improve the rights of the women. The output should hopefully answer the question: When information is not enough to change the life of women, what is?

All three proposals are searching for answers that are essential to the organisations future work and the quality of it. Further more the results and lessons learnt can be used by other organisations.

Topic Team news

All three Topic Teams are in an advanced process of writing brochures and manuals. The results will soon be presented to partners, at the latest by the end of the year.
Topic Team 1 headed by Maselle Maziku on institutional capacity building has had discussion on the approach. Should it be demand driving or offered after an assessment of the partner by the core Team? The assessment approach created concern in the partner group, and this discussion has not ended. The Team will have a meeting in November about the content of the manual.
Topic Team 2 headed by Andrew Mhina on public-private partnership is deep into a process of facilitating stakeholders meeting in five regions. The aim is to make the PPP approach known and to facilitate trust and partnerships between local government, civil society and private business in decentralized development.
After this round of meetings the Team will meet again to discuss the next steps.
Topic Team 3 headed by Florida Henjewele on strategic planning, fundraising and networking is busy finishing the manuals, and already next week the first  training will take part. The training will be on the core business of the Team. In November the next workshop on ICT – Information and Communication Technologies will take place.

TRCC success

Teachers Resource Centre Coalition is experiencing a row of successes in the latest time.
Half of the 650 TR Centres in Tanzania are now member of the coalition and the Coalition just held a good general assembly.
A survey of the districts showed that the TRCs are there, but they do not get any funds from the district administration. That was a good knowledge to have in the lobby meeting with the Ministry of Education, and they admitted, that the funds did not reach the TRCs.
TRCC got funds from the MS research fund to make a survey over donors to TRCs, and latest they got funding from Aide et Action to send out a newsletter to all members.

Naramatisho success

Naramatisho in Chalintze has now embarked on the PPP approach. The Maasai women have no access to market for their milk, and they don’t have money to invest in milk-tanks to cool the milk for preservation.
Naramatisho has for two villages made agreements with a Dar based diary. The diary provides the milk-tank and buys the milk. Naramatisho provide the training and supervision, and the villagers build the house for the tank and control the incoming milk.