At a breakfast policy dialogue hosted by Policy Forum and WAJIBU – Institute of Public Accountability, former Controller and Auditor General Ludovick Utouh delivered a critique of public financial management and service delivery in Tanzania, based on the findings from the latest audit reports. The event, part of Policy Forum's 2025 Breakfast Debate series, gathered stakeholders from government, civil society, and development partners to reflect on audit outcomes and budget execution trends.

The National Audit Office (NAOT) and the Controller and Auditor General (CAG) completed and submitted the audit reports to the President of the United Republic of Tanzania H.E Samia Suluhu Hassan on March 28, 2021 and which were tabled subsequently in Parliament on 8th April 2021.

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.