Major challenges

DFID: Working to reduce poverty in Tanzania

Governance | Health | Education | Safe water | Growth

In the past five years Tanzania has received $6 billion in aid. Of this, DFID has provided £500 million (approximately $900 million). DFID has provided Poverty Reduction Budget Support (PRBS) to the government of Tanzania since 2000.

Making aid effective

What is PRBS? PRBS is when a donor provides funds directly to a partner government’s own financial system to support their own poverty reduction programmes. DFID believes that, when circumstances are right, PRBS is the aid instrument most likely to build long term ability of governments to deliver services to their people – whilst helping to build stronger accountability between a state and its citizens. We only provide aid in this way where we are satisfied that the government gives sufficient priority to poverty reduction and has open and transparent financial systems.

In the 2009/10 financial year DFID is providing £140 million of aid to Tanzania, £103.5 million of it as PRBS.

• DFID is one of 14 PRBS donors in Tanzania. Our combined funds work to help the government of Tanzania deliver its growth and poverty reduction plan (known locally as Mkukuta).
• The government leads the Joint Assistance Strategy, a process with over 40 donors on which sets out clear expectations and roles for both donors and government to deliver effective aid.

Governance

People suffer when governments don’t allow citizens to participate in political life, provide access to justice, deliver adequate public services or control corruption. Serious problems with governance still exist but there are areas of improvement. Through its work with the Tanzanian government, DFID is:

• funding reforms of the public service and public financial management systems including improving procurement and strengthening the National Audit Office. Since 2006 audits have been produced on time. In 2007, audits of Procuring entities have begun and results published
• supporting the key institutions investigating and prosecuting grand corruption cases by providing them with the funds to draw in the necessary resources to help the government deliver against its commitments
• supporting efforts to strengthen civic education, oversight bodies and the capacity of political institutions - parliament, election bodies and political parties - to promote accountability
• providing core funding to civil society organizations to help hold the government to account, taking part in processes such as public expenditure reviews on health and education
• supporting media in Tanzania to increase its quantity of quality investigative and public journalism in order to contribute to public debate and increase public demand for greater accountability.

Health

Budget support and growth in domestic revenues helped Tanzania to more than quadruple spending on health to $600 million since 2000, with the following results:

• a fall in under-5 mortality rates by almost a quarter
• a 23% reduction in the proportion of under-5s with fever
• a rise in the rate of vaccination against diphtheria, pertussis (whooping cough) and tetanus, from 81% to 87%
• the vaccination of 92% of infants against measles (in 2008).

In 2007, assisted by DFID budget support, the government provided vouchers to 720,000 pregnant women and 556,000 infants for insect treated mosquito nets (ITNs) and provided some 12 million doses of the malaria drug (ALU)99. Between 2001 and 2007, ownership of ITNs in rural areas doubled.

Education

Budget support and growth in domestic revenues helped Tanzania to quadruple spending on education to $1billion since 2000, with the result that:

• there are now 4 million more children in school
• the number of teachers has increased by almost a half
• the number of schools has increased by a third
• around 58% of primary school leavers went on to secondary school in 2008 compared to 22% in 2000.

Safe water

Budget support and growth in domestic revenues helped Tanzania to increase spending on safe water has increased from $17 million to $150 million since 2000, and a safe water supply now reaches 56% of the population in the countryside, while in urban areas it reaches 78%.

Growth

DFID supports the government and the private sector to improve the business environment and stimulate economic growth that benefits the poor, including socially disadvantaged groups such as women entrepreneurs. We are working with others development partners to:

• support the Business Environment Strengthening for Tanzania (BEST) programme to reduce red tape and improve the efficiency of government institutions (such as the land registry and commercial court) that provide services to the business community
• support private sector advocacy as an essential input into better regulation and public policy making. Fund programmes with the Central Bank, commercial banks and microfinance institutions to deepen financial markets in order to improve access and affordability of financial services in Tanzania
• co-fund work to improve the competitiveness of small and medium enterprises in key export sectors
• strengthen the government’s policy and planning function in the Transport sector, in order to help address the key infrastructure constraints to economic growth in Tanzania
• address the negative impacts of climate change on the Tanzanian environment and economy
• promote – in collaboration with government - a gendered approach to growth in order to address the key constraints to women’s economic empowerment.