GOOD GOVERNANACE AND DEMOCRACY

Background
Beginning September 2005, Pact Tanzania began implementing a four year program entitled “BONGA”, an acronym which spells out Building Organizational Networks for Good Governance and Advocacy. BONGA is a Kiswahili word meaning “to speak out!” The main aspiration of the BONGA program was to build on the positive results of Pact Tanzania’s maiden democracy and governance project - the Tanzania Advocacy Partnership Program (TAPP) which began in 2002 concluded in 2005. The BONGA program aims to further increase public participation in political decision-making and holding government accountable.

In August 2006, the program funding and support came from the United States Government’s Millennium Challenge Account; thus changing the program name to Millennium Challenge Account – Building Organizational Networks for Good Governance and Advocacy (MCA-BONGA) This program was established to support USAID Democracy and Governance Strategic Objective and to directly support the SO 14: “Public Accountability Strengthened in Selected Policy Areas”, particularly IR 2: “Civil Society Advocacy Improved”. The overall goal of MCA-BONGA was to strengthen the capacity of Tanzanian Civil Society Organizations to improve their ability to conduct advocacy activities and therefore increase public participation in the political process. The original end date for MCA-BONGA was 30 September 2008.

Our Achievements as of November 2008:
Public expenditure tracking systems:

There are now a total of 91 PETS Committees operating in 65 districts through out more than half of Tanzania.

Some journalists from both print and electronic media were trained on PETS skills and how to work with CSOs to publish findings from PETS activities.

Increasingly we are witnessing strong support from local authorities at regional and district levels

GOT has mainstreamed PETS, adopting Pact guideline PETS guidelines as official guidelines

Public expenditure notice boards have been installed in 367 villages up to the end of September 2008.

Two Manuals on PETS were published:

Engaging Communities and Civil Society Organizations in Public Expenditure Tracking developed by Pact and a Kiswahili guide on PETS called Mwongozo Wa Ufuatiliaji Fedha Za Umma which was developed by the NGO Policy Forum. with some input from Pact.

Capacity building intervention:
Through training, technical assistance and mentoring, Pact has built the capacity of CSO’s to organize and undertake advocacy and increase the level of citizen participation in governance issues. In the long term, Pact seeks to create the conditions under which many active CSO’s are advocating for key policy reforms and turning the government’s attention to issues of public importance

Media engagement in anti-corruption and good governance.
Journalists play an important role in combating corruption by monitoring government and private sector activities. Pact in collaboration with two media institutions; the Media Institute of Southern Africa and Journalists Environmental Association of Tanzania conducted training for journalists and editors in topics such as investigative journalism in corruption and good governance, IJ in natural resources management and IJ in public procurement. There was also one training for editorial cartoonists and photographers on their role in reportage of corruption-related material.

Media owners, managers and editors attended roundtable discussions on their role reporting on corruption and good governance practices in the country.

The number of stories about corruption appearing in the press continued its dramatic upward trend.

A total of 7547 articles on corruption and anti-corruption issues were written in various newspapers.

314 ¹ journalists were trained during the life of the program.

At the inception of the program, Tanzanian newspapers were publishing only about 20 corruption-related stories per month; today, the figure goes around 314 per month.

Several of the journalists trained by the program were involved in breaking the story of the Richmond scandal and External Payments Account (EPA)

Responding to our success, other donors (Norway) have begun funding long term programs in Investigative Journalism focusing on governance in natural resource management.

Building on the successes
To build on this success Pact Tanzania will continue to strengthen citizen’s capacity as decision makers to build more accountable and equitable institutions of power at all governance levels. In the coming five months, Pact Tanzania will concentrate on:

Developing the institutional capacities of civil society organizations and citizen groups to conduct PETS

Providing a strong basis for their advocacy activities, and

Strengthening CSO networks and linkages, with a special emphasis on partnerships with local government offices for accountability.

Pact recognizes that the delicate relationship between Tanzanian NGOs that advance public accountability reforms and the government will require emphasis in collaboration with the government itself. At the same time, a CSO watchdog function is essential to any reforms, so there is a need to strike a careful balance between the collaborative and watchdog roles played by civil society.

19 journalists who attend training on Investigative journalism in procurement attended more than one training because this was specialized training