To reach those who are furthest behind in society, it is important to institute a system of just and fair social economic development. This is key especially during these tough times of the COVID-19 pandemic where global health and economic systems have been significantly disrupted. Through the years that I have been working with communities, I have observed how important it is to have groups of people who are empowered and have a voice and the capacity of being active players in raising concerns that affects their wellbeing.

Policy Forum adopted social accountability monitoring (SAM) in 2008 as one of its strategic approaches to capacitate its members working at the sub-national level in Tanzania to engage in policy processes more meaningfully. Since then, I have seen SAM initiatives contribute to building teacher’s housing at remote schools, the operationalisation of primary health care facilities, and the empowerment of communities to lead participatory forest governance efforts among others.

The 2017/2018 CAG’s report has indicated areas of corruptive and fraudulent transactions amounting to TZS 207.12 billion. The amount is derived from weakness in the management of transit goods TZS 7.975 billion, human resources and pensions 2.59 billion, procurement and contract management TZS 133.17 billion, the expenditure management and budget execution TZS 54.48 billion and in management and collection of own source revenues TZS 8.66 billion.

The Embassy of Switzerland in Dar es Salaam through the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) has launched the third phase of its Social Accountability Programme (SAP) which provides support to key national Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) who are working to improve accountability in Tanzania.

The recently released 2016/17 Controller & Auditor General Report has revealed a number of challenges relating to effective financial accountability at the local level including under and over-disbursements, massive amounts of unspent funds by local government authorities, drop in revenue collections and ineffective use of spent monies.

It has been revealed that the sustainability of social accountability monitoring (SAM) as a tool and an approach would depend on how it is successfully entrenched within Tanzanian communities with gradual reduction of dependency on donor resources as an exit strategy. If SAM continued to be donor-driven, it would one day collapse, stakeholders at a recent learning event were told.

Policy Forum (PF) network is looking forward to framing its future efforts on Social Accountability Monitoring (SAM) based on the lessons learned in the previous years of implementation in Tanzania.

Mafinga member of Parliament, Hon. Cosato Chumi, has called upon actors to collaborate in addressing challenges that are faced by Local Government Authorities (LGAs). Opening a training workshop on the roles and responsibilities of Councilors held on the 22nd to 26th November 2016, he said that the government cannot address all these challenges alone and it needs efforts from non-state actors such as civil society organisations (CSOs).

A call has been made by Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) to the National Audit Office of Tanzania (NAOT) to strengthen its Ad hoc working group that was formed with the intention of collaborating with CSOs to promote good governance and accountability.

Policy Forum in collaboration with PSAM conducted a three days workshop aiming to develop a collective learning agenda on SAM by drawing from trainers experiences in training and applying the PSAM approach. The workshop was held on 22nd to 23rd September at Royal Village Hotel, Dodoma Tanzania.