UNDP in Tanzania

UNCDF’s approach is to invest with the poor – strengthening and reinforcing the productive capacity and self-reliance of poor communities by increasing their access to essential local infrastructure and services. The Fund works to strengthen these communities’ inﬂuence over economic and social investments that directly affect their lives and livelihoods.

UNCDF, in partnership with UNDP, the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (NORAD) and the Government of Tanzania, approved two programmes between 1997 and 2003 for a total of US$ 19 million, in support of the Government’s decentralization efforts. Through these two programmes - Support to Decentralization Programme (SDP) In Mwanza Region and Support to Good Local Governance Programme - UNCDF and UNDP are assisting Government in its efforts to establish the necessary technical and ﬁnancial means to effectively decentralize its planning and ﬁnancing functions to the lowest levels of local government and supporting the development of an active local private sector. The two programmes, which are active in all six districts of Mwanza region (Ukerewe, Geita, Magu, Sengerema, Misungwi, and Kwimba), involve the following key interventions:

This is a comprehensive programme aimed at testing a model of decentralized (local) planning, ﬁnancing and implementation of social and economic infrastructures. It is comprised of two main components: the Local Development Fund (LDF) and the District and Feeder Roads Programme (DFRP).

The LDF has poverty reduction as its main objective. It achieves this through the following:

Strengthening the capacities of local government and other stakeholders while providing grants for rehabilitating and constructing small-scale infrastructure (micro projects), such as health centres, schools, cattle dips, abattoirs and market fencing – all of which are identiﬁed through the participation of local beneﬁciaries;
Developing and improving systems used by District Councils to plan, implement, operate and maintain, monitor and evaluate projects. In this regard a number of planning tools have been developed and improved including an incentive based allocation mechanism, guidelines for performance assessment of districts, improved participatory planning approach, and gender mainstreaming tools.
Creating employment opportunities through on-the-job and classroom training carried out for both the private sector (consultants, contractors and NGOs) and the public sector (district engineers, technicians, planning ofﬁcers and accountants).

The Local Development Fund (LDF) provides funds for both district and village level projects and the total funds available are equally shared between these two levels. With regard to the village level projects, the target is to cover 77 wards and 364 villages.

Rehabilitating more than 350 kilometres of selected high priority rural feeder roads (impacting directly on agricultural development and ﬁsheries) using Labour- Based Technology (LBT);
Training local contractors, consultants, district engineers and technicians in labour-based road rehabilitation and maintenance;
Developing road maintenance systems for rehabilitated roads;
Through the Loan Guarantee fund, enabling private contractors to be able to acquire essential equipment required in the rehabilitation of works using Labour-Based Technology.

By the end of the programme, at least 800,000 days of work will have been created in the villages along the rehabilitated roads through utilization of Labour-Based Technology. It will also provide cash income to villagers in the neighbourhood of 1 billion Tanzanian shillings (approximately US$ 1 million).

As of December 2003, the DFRP had rehabilitated 250 kilometres of high priority roads in the six rural districts of Mwanza Region. Through use of Labour- Based Technology, a total of 490,000 worker days have been created, ensuring cash income for villagers of 685 million shillings (which represents 31% of the total construction cost of the roads).Twenty percent of the work generated by the DFRP goes to women directly while the average construction cost of the roads is about 10 million shillings per kilometre.

In conjunction with UNDP, close collaboration has been established with the Swiss Development Cooperation (SDC), the Embassy of Finland, DANIDA and the Royal Netherlands Embassy in developing and piloting a District Roads Maintenance System (planning module, reporting module, and mapping module completed) and training of district engineers staff in the six districts of Mwanza.

The private contractors, who were trained by the project, were also supported with bank loans through the CRDB, which enabled them to buy the equipment necessary for rehabilitation of roads using Labour-Based Technology.

The Support to Good Local Governance Programme is assisting the decentralization process in Tanzania by scaling up the experiences and lessons learned through both the LDF and DFRP and facilitating their replication in other regions. In an effort to support the ongoing Local Government Reform Programme (LGRP), this intervention is implemented in cooperation with the President’s Ofﬁce, Regional Administration and Local Governments (PORALG). As such the project is:

Supporting the Local Government Reform Programme (LGRP) through contributing to the Common Basket Fund;
Creating linkages Between UNCDF and UNDP Programmes by scaling up experiences from Mwanza;
Deepening the LDF activities in Mwanza, particularly development of systems and capacity building for Local Government Reform in Mwanza.

Overall both programmes have made signiﬁcant impact including contributing important lessons to Government in support of Government’s national efforts to promote and scale up the use of Labour- Based Technology in Tanzania (“Taking the Use of Labour-Based Technology to Scale” Ministry of Works, March 2003).