Focus Areas

'Building Local Democracy' is the global MS focus. It is divided into two sub themes: 

• Making local government accountable
• Political empowerment

MS Tanzania uses Public Private Partnership (PPP) as the strategy to build local democracy. The legal framework and policies for decentralisation and involvement of the communities in local governance are in place in Tanzania, but implementation is still weak.

MS Tanzania wants civil society organisations (CSOs) to enter into partnerships with local government institutions, in order to reach the goals in the national poverty reduction strategy, the MKUKUTA.

By building trust and working together, joint knowledge, resources and networks can enhance public services. CSOs can also play the role of monitoring good governance by conducting Public Expenditure Tracking (PET) and insisting on information.
Many PPP initiatives will start with joint training for civil society, councillors and local administrative staff. MS Tanzania has many partners with good experiences in PPP, in public awareness campaigns and civic education.

As focus area number two MS has chosen 'Land Rights'. Again, the legal framework for rural land rights is in place, but not known and implemented. The basic problem is to get the land demarcated and to obtain land titles. Another issue is to create awareness within more traditional thinking of legal land rights, such as women’s inheritance rights. Distribution of land between big investors, agriculturalists and pastoralists creates conflict in many districts.

This text is a preliminary presentation and is to be updated.