The Development Partners Group (DPG) was formally established in 2004, in order to build a coordinated development partner (DP) response to the Government’s Tanzania Assistance Strategy (TAS), within the overarching framework of the Poverty Reduction Strategy (PRS). Since the formalization of the DPG, the DPs have moved towards increasingly close collaboration and improved internal coherence.

In 2005, the Government of Tanzania adopted the outcome-based National Strategy for Growth and Reduction of Poverty (MKUKUTA, in Kiswahili acronym) as the 5-year framework for poverty reduction. The Zanzibar Strategy for Growth and Reduction of Poverty (MKUZA) is also being prepared. In addition, in 2006, the Government and DPs agreed a Joint Assistance Strategy for Tanzania (JAST) as a framework for more effective external assistance. The JAST seeks to further enhance national ownership and Government leadership of the development process. The DPs have responded positively to the harmonization and alignment agenda, and have established Working Groups to promote this agenda at the sector and thematic level.

In the light of these recent developments, the DPG decided to review its function and Terms of Reference. These revised terms of reference draw principally on the reports of the DPG Architecture Task Force (2006) and the DPG Seminar on DPG Architecture for Aid Effectiveness (14 November 2006).

Effective, high quality, and regular dialogue between the Government, Development Partners (DPs) and domestic stakeholders is crucial for our successful co-operation towards achieving national development, growth and poverty reduction goals. Currently, sector and national dialogue takes place around different processes (PER, MKUKUTA, GBS etc.), with often overlapping agendas, schedules and memberships without clear selection criteria as well as weak or unclear inter-linkages. This has led to high transaction costs as well as insufficient quality and ineffective dialogue arrangements and their expected outputs. For example, MDAs engage in sector dialogue with DPs and at the same time are direct members in PER CWGs, representing their own Ministries rather than the sector at cluster level. Structures for national dialogue throughout the year are in place for the PER process, but are missing for the MKUKUTA process in terms of policy dialogue on MKUKUTA implementation. The only multi-stakeholder forum for this purpose is the MKUKUTA Annual Review/Poverty Policy Week.

One of the challenges that the government of Tanzania is trying to address is the translation of recent economic gains into the social

well-being of its people.

Having experienced a sustained period of economic hardship, deteriorating Development Partner relationships, and the consequent

suspension of aid assistance, 1997 marked a new beginning in terms of better aid relations and national development transformation in Tanzania.

Thanks to the Helleiner’s Independent Commission Report (1994), the government and its development partners (DPs) agreed to reform

Tanzania’s aid management framework. By placing national ownership and government leadership at the forefront of the development process,

they fostered transparency and accountability in external resource management.

A sector or thematic area constitutes a thematic entity on the basis of which policies, strategies and plans are formulated and implemented and dialogue is organized. At the same time, the term sector (or thematic area) is used to refer to a group of institutions (e.g. MDAs) that are stakeholders and engage in dialogue on the thematic entity. Examples for a sector are education, water, agriculture, etc. Examples for thematic areas are governance, public financial management, etc.

thematic area) dialogue within the Government and between the Government, DPs and other stakeholders still play an important role. They are important underlying structures of the MKUKUTA clusters and provide necessary inputs for cluster and national level dialogue in the MKUKUTA, PER and GBS processes. The functioning of these national processes thus greatly depends on the functioning of the underlying sectors/thematic areas and the dialogue therein both on policy and budget / expenditure issues. 

The functioning of sectors and sector dialogue requires a clear classification of sectors and thematic areas as dialogue fora under each MKUKUTA cluster, which is adopted by ALL stakeholders. Such a commonly adopted classification is currently missing. Only some sectors are clearly defined and have dialogue arrangements in place (education, agriculture, health etc.) – most of which were already specified under the first Poverty Reduction Strategy. As MKUKUTA has a much broader scope than the first PRS, it requires an expansion of the classification of sectors and thematic areas which underlie the three MKUKUTA clusters.