APRM IMPLEMENTATION IN TANZANIA
Introduction: Government’s willingness for the country to
be reviewed
The government showed its desire to become a party to the APRM by signing the MoU on 26th May 2004 and securing formal admission on 8th July 2004. The country’s parliament ratified the MOU on 1st February 2005, following a one-day sensitization seminar for its members and a three-hour debate.
Initial sensitization on APRM
Since the spirit of APRM lies in transparency and participation, the government found it imperative to start sensitization of key stakeholders quite early, even as the APRM organization in the country was still being established. For example, the Focal Point followed up the sensitization of Parliament with four significant stakeholders’ seminars and workshops in 2006. One of the workshops, which was representative of almost every possible stakeholder group, provided recommendations by which the organization, APRM Tanzania, was built. Among the early sensitizers were resource people from Ghana and Kenya, whose experience as pioneers in APR assessment was worth learning from.
The Country Support Mission
Tanzania received the Country Support Mission, led by Professor Adebayo Adedeji, in mid-2006. The mission provided valuable advice on how to proceed with the process of constituting the review, especially with respect to the inclusiveness of the National Governing Council (NGC) and the integrity of the APRM country structures.
Balancing the Interests of Stakeholders in the NGC
Following the initial stakeholder sensitization, a national governing council of 20 members was constituted near the end of 2006. With regard to this, Tanzania had learned from the experience of others in trying to find a structure of internal organization of the review that reflects and balances the interests of all major stakeholders. Generally, the most recognizable stakeholders are Civil Society and the Government.
The wisdom in APRM has been to ensure that the non-governmental sector has a fair share of ownership of the process, not only in airing its view of governance but also in oversight and decision-making structures. The experience of those who were the first to launch the APRM assessment has made this wisdom more apparent.
Accordingly, Tanzania has decided that those representing governmental institutions in the NGC do not constitute more than 20%, while the rest are representatives of academia, the Parliament and non-governmental organizations (who are the majority by far). To emphasize the independence of the civil society group in the NGC, their representatives were not appointed by the President, but they were selected and elected by their own organizations.
Autonomy and integrity of APRM Tanzania
(a) The NGC
Balancing the interests of stakeholders in the NGC was one way of minimising the influence of the government in the review process. The other was to ensure that those representing governmental institutions were not of the rank of Minister. This was for the purpose of minimising the government’s influence in the Council, often perceived to increase with the presence of ministers. The Council, which is chaired by an academician, has complete freedom in designing policy and taking decisions on the review. These have included all Secretariat appointments, approval of work-plans and budgets, and the selection of the Technical Assessment Institutions (TATs).
(b) The National Secretariat
APRM Tanzania has had an independent process of the recruitment of the National Secretariat’s staff on the basis of merit. This involved public advertisements and interviews conducted by panels of experts. They were then appointed by the Council on the panels’ recommendations. Similarly, the Technical Assessment Teams conducting the bulk of the country self-assessment sought the assignment by public bidding, and they underwent a process of evaluation by a panel of experts prior to selection by the Council.
The Focal Point
In Tanzania the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation is the Focal Point, and a ministry official with ambassadorial rank is the Focal Point Officer. It is closely assisted by the Commission of Planning (formerly the Ministry of Planning, Economy and Empowerment), and the Office of the Minister of State for Good Governance in the President’s office. Having played the role of establishing APRM Tanzania, the Focal Point has now sought to concentrate on liaising between the government and the continental APRM structures, and between the government and the national APRM structures. It is also coordinating APRM matters within the government, while providing advice to APRM Tanzania when necessary. The Focal Point does not sit in the Council, but it enjoys a good working relationship with both the Council and the National Secretariat
Commencement of Operations by APRM Tanzania
Although Tanzania joined the APRM in 2004, and despite commendable commitment by the government to initiate the process thereafter, Tanzania did not manage to put the implementing structure, APRM Tanzania, in place until mid-2007, when a full-fledged national Secretariat was established to support the NGC
Facilitation by Financing
The entire review process needs substantial funding, estimated by APRM Tanzania to be in the region of 2.5 billion shillings (about USD 2,000,000) in the first year of the organization’s operations (2007/08). Through a budget approved by Parliament, the Tanzanian government committed itself to providing 84.4% of the financial needs in 2007/8, while UNDP Tanzania committed itself to providing for 15.6%. At the end of the financial year the government had been able to provide about 50% of the required funds. UNDP Tanzania is now providing the rest of that year’s funding to cover the deficit. In the second year of APRM Tanzania’s operations (2008/09), APRM Tanzania has estimated its funding requirements to be in the region of 3 billion shillings (about USD2,500,000). The government has pledged to provide for 66% of the financial needs, while the UNDP has committed itself to meeting the rest.
Status of activities of APRM Tanzania
(a) Capacity building in the Council and the Secretariat
From the beginning the NGC decided that APRM Tanzania needed to build the capacity of its two organs, the NGC itself and the Secretariat, by ensuring that they enjoyed physical facilitation, and that both were knowledgeable in APRM matters.
With the facilitation of the Focal Point, APRM Tanzania has acquired adequate and modern premises for the staff of the National Secretariat. Each of the offices is equipped with the required furniture, computers, telephones and internet services. Adequate vehicle transport is also available. Financial facilitation, the availability of premises and the existence of a working secretariat has enabled the NGC to conduct nine scheduled meetings between July 2007 and October 2008.
With respect to knowledge of APRM, the NGC initially attended two sensitisation seminars lasting a total of four days, and it has since participated in many of the stakeholder sensitisation activities. The Secretariat has undergone similar training. More importantly, all senior and middle level officers of the Secretariat have been trained and have conducted sensitisation facilitation in all stakeholder seminars conducted so far. This has given them the necessary knowledge, experience and confidence in conducting sensitisation on APRM.
(b) Continuing Sensitisation
APRM Tanzania is fully aware of the need to conduct sensitisation for the entire duration of the review. For this reason APRM Tanzania has intensified its activities in this area since December 2007. Both the Council and the Secretariat are heavily involved in this work, but other stakeholders, such as the media and civil society organisations, are also actively engaged in it as a result of deliberate networking efforts by APRM Tanzania.
The main form of sensitisation of the public is by news media. Newspapers, television and the radio have all been actively involved through talk shows, advertorials and announcements. In future the radio, with its greater reach, will remain pivotal in this role. Since December 2007 APRM affairs have been covered in numerous programmes, news bulletins, stories, features and advertorials on TV and radio, and in newspapers. An 8-page quarterly newsletter was published in April, July and October 2008. 90,000 copies of the newsletter were distributed to the public, mostly as a newspaper pull-out. Its electronic version was placed on the APRM Tanzania website . APRM Tanzania is working on further dissemination through brochures, posters, newsletters, garment prints, radio spots and TV spots.
Certain key stakeholders and a section of the ordinary public have to be sensitised through contact seminars. Stakeholder groups that have been sensitised in this way include Members of the Union Parliament; Members of the Zanzibar House of Representatives; leaders of political parties; principal secretaries in Zanzibar; ministry directors; heads of units; regional and district administrative secretaries; district executive directors; leaders of civil society organisations; trade unions; cooperatives; Technical Assessment Institutions (TAT); media organisations; the disabled; academia; leaders of the youth; leaders in Faith-Based Organizations (FBOs); and women leaders. About 2,000 people were sensitised in this manner
Also sensitised in face-to-face seminars were representatives of all societal groups in 26 regional seminars of 35 people each. Not less than 900 people, therefore, attended these regional steak holder seminars
In addition, there has been an APRM sensitisation public rally or seminar in four villages of each of the 26 regions of Tanzania. The number of participants in village rallies ranged from 100 to 250, and it is estimated that nearly 20,000 villagers attended these contact seminars.
In total there have been 156 sensitization seminars of this contact type since the start of APRM in the country, of which 6 were conducted early by the government and by the UNDP. Thus APRM Tanzania has conducted 150 of them, involving about 26,900 participants.
Also, there have been six other significant meetings of APRM information dissemination, five of which were conducted by APRM Tanzania.
An accompaniment of the sensitisation has been the distribution of 6,660 copies of standard APRM documents, which are:
- Declaration on Democracy, Political, Economic and Corporate Governance
- Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) on the APRM
- Objectives, Standards, Criteria and Indicators for the APRM
- Guidelines for Countries to prepare for and to participate in the African Peer Review Mechanism.
- Country Self Assessment for the African Peer Review
- APRM Tanzania’s Sensitization Document
(c) Technical Assessment
APRM Tanzania has adhered to the principle that it is the TATs that will compile the entire Country Self Assessment Report (CSAR). Initially they will do so by integrating information from the public submissions with all of the information generated from the technical studies, including the desk research, the perception surveys, special in-depth studies and other supplementary studies. The draft CSAR, with its accompanying Programme of Action (PoA), will then be subjected to several validation workshops, both technical and public.
The Technical Assessment Teams (TATs) conducted their desk research from October to December 2007. In March and May 2008 they presented their draft reports in the four major APRM thematic areas to workshops of technical representatives of stakeholders that lasted four days. In the intervening period TATs continued to revise their desk research reports, and in August 2008 they conducted countrywide household and expert panel surveys of public opinion on governance in Tanzania. The TATs have now completed the work of merging the results of desk research and opinion surveys. They are also incorporating the results of opinion investigations of key social groups, consisting mostly of leading CSOs, that had group discussions on governance in Tanzania. The draft CSAR, with its accompanying Programme of Action (PoA), is expected for tabling and discussion in several validation workshops in November 2008.
(d) Assessment by the public through the common questionnaire
It is expected that soon there will be information generated separately by the public’s assessment through responses to the common APRM questionnaire. APRM Tanzania has so far distributed about 3860 copies of the APRM common questionnaire to key stakeholders, mostly during sensitization events. More common questionnaires for public submission were distributed at village rallies and through local government offices. APRM Tanzania has encouraged others to download the common questionnaire from the continental APRM website and the APRM Tanzania website, www.aprmtanzania.org, where both the English and Kiswahili versions are available. Members of the public have been encouraged throughout the seminars and the media to fill the questionnaire and submit it to the National Secretariat.
(e) Submission of the Governance Report of Tanzania
The schedule of APRM Tanzania has been revised several times to fit the financial situation and other circumstances. The revised programme now envisages submission of the Country Self Assessment Report (CSAR) in December 2008, external assessment in February 2009, and submission of the Country Review Report (CRR) to the Forum of Participating Heads of States and Government in May 2009. All stakeholders in Tanzania are being urged to work towards these ends. However, another delay of up to a month is already being anticipated, as all the activities planned for mid-October 2008 to the end of that month were not completed as expected. This may have significant consequences for the submission of the Tanzanian Report to the Secretariat and, eventually, to the Forum.
CONCLUSION
Successful implementation of APRM activities depends on many things. The most important ones on the horizon include the cooperation and mutual support of the key stakeholders, such as the Focal Point, other government departments, the NGC and the Secretariat. Also included is the sensitization and understanding of the characteristics of the review as a limited-term, fast-paced project that is useful only when results are delivered in the expected time-frame. Finally, a steady and reliable flow of funds is critical to the implementation of APRM. So far there has been excellent cooperation and mutual support among the key stakeholders. The NGC, the Secretariat and the Focal Point authorities have all been sensitized together to understand the requirements of the APRM success. One of the challenges of APRM Tanzania is to continue sensitizing other stakeholders, including other government departments, so that they all understand the importance of this national project and the urgency of its work, which require support through participation in workshops, POA drafting, providing timely government responses to the Country Review Report when the time comes, and facilitating the smooth flow of funds.
