An evaluation of foreign planning assistance to Tanzania's decentralized regional planning programme, 1972–81

AppriedGeog~u~h~~(1982),21 291-302 0 1982 Butterwotths

291

An evaluation of foreign planning assistance to Tanzania’s decentralized regional planning programme,

D. G. R. Belshaw

School ofDevelopment Studiesloverseas Development Group Ltd, University of East Anglia, Norwich NR4 7T.J, England

Abstract The paper describes: (i) the structure of administrative decentralization, to regional level and below, which has been adopted in Tanzania since 1972; (ii) the pattern of foreign technical and capital assistance provided to date, and (iii) the major problems encountered in practice.

Introduction The objective of this paper is to evaluate the ‘performance’ of foreign aid donors in assisting the government of Tanzania to formulate regional development plans for its 20 mainland regions. The relevant period extends from the commencement of the policy of decentralizing important powers of development decision-making to regional level (N yerere 1972) to the time of writing 10 years later. The policy area under examination has an importance extending beyond the immediate implications for Tanzania’s development strategy. much debated as that has been in the international literature. In addition. the policies of decentralization of development decision-making to lower levels in the political and public sector hierarchies and the introduction of comprehensive regional or area-based plans are being wideIy advocated in and for other Third World countries, on grounds of greater equity and popular pa~icipation, and aid donors are increasingly receiving requests for both technical assistance and capita1 aid for such exercises. Also, the Tanzanian experience permits the examination of the differential performance in executing identical tasks of a set of donors who together embrace a wide range of positions on the ideological spectrum. This may shed some light on the validity of assertions that aid from ‘capitalist’ countries is necessarily incapable of contributing to equity and popular participation objectives, whereas the ‘correct’ ideological stance is synonymous with achievement of patterns of more equitable or egalitarian development. Although 10 years may seem an adequate period for the task, it is not possible to carry out a full ex post evaluation of donors’ aid to regional plans, in the sense of identifying the influence achieved on such objectives as improvements in physical productivity, foreign exchange earnings. marketed food surplus stability. and inter-family or inter-regional income distribution. In practice, in only two regions have the plans been implemented for longer than five years: very few useful conclusions could be drawn from so small a sample. In any case, the observable influence on development objectives achieved by a donor’s

292

Foreign pian~~ingassistance to Tanzania: 1972-81

inputs requires the construction of models of the intervention process and the development process which will portray the effects of (i) non-donor inputs into the intervention process (most obviously in this case material inputs supplied and regional policy decisions taken by the Tanzanian government agencies); and (ii) inputs into the regional development process coming from outside the sphere of regional developmental planning (government’s actions in non-regional areas. internal changes-such as innovation diffusion-within the regional economy. and inter-regional and international economic interactions with the regional economy). Full e.y post evaluation of regional planning on these lines has not been attempted to date in Tanzania, and may not be justified until five or six regional plans have been in operation for at least six or seven years. Preliminary assessments have been made efsewhere, however. of dif~cufties for decentrafization policy and regional planning caused by non-donor inputs-area (i) above-and by the performance of the rural sector under a wide range of policies and institutions-a large part of area (ii) above: see Befshaw (1979b) and Befshaw (I 9X I ). The task to hand is more limited: an evaluation of donor activities in regional plan formulation and funding at the level of the direct consequences or outputs arising and their probable indirect effects on the economies of the regions concerned. In Fig. I the sequence of activities under review is portrayed in the form of a block-flow diagram. It is clear that an examination of the complete notional sequence commonly used in monitoring and evaluation procedures. of inputs-outputs-effects-impact. would involve a very large number of variables to be taken into account. Without proceeding to a complete model, however. it is feasible to derive a partial set of evaluation criteria which will enable some conclusions to be drawn about inter-donor planning performance. These criteria are: 1. Did the donor accept the invitation to assist a region and provide a technical assistance team? 2. Were the draft plan proposals accepted by the Tanzanian government-at regional or central level-and if not. why? 3. Was the accepted plan proposal followed up with funds and technical assistance for plan implementation? 4. Was the plan content and scale of implementation assistance broadly consistent with the achievement of significant impact on the final development objectives? The following section of this paper outlines the development policy and administrative structure contexts within which decentralized regional planning has been carried out. The third section applies the four partial evaluation criteria to the observed pattern of donor assistance. Finally. attempts are made to draw conclusions about the overall contribution of donor regional planning inputs to Tanzania’s development. the possible implications of this experience for other countries embarking on or contemplating regional planning, and the extent to which it throws fight on current stereotypes about foreign aid to the Third World in general.

The policy and administrative

contexts

of regional planning

The development strategy followed by Tanzania since the Arusha Declaration of 1967 is well known for its emphasis on reducmg both internal inequality and external dependency. The former goal has been pursued through an evolving national devefopment strategy emphasizing rural development as a major objective. This strategy has included measures intended to achieve:

Other planning inputs region x

Donor technical assistance

Inputs

+

I

e

:

Other demands on donor finance

Plan proposals -region x

outputs IT

Process

---+ d

,

to regional planning.

Process

of donor assistance

Autonomous socioeconomic changes -regron x

Inter - regional and international effects

Other public policies, projects, etc.

Plan implementation - region x

Effects

Figure 1. Simplified block-flow diagram for examining the performance

Planning process region x

I

Process Impact

294

Foreign planning assistance to Tanzania: 1972-81

Reduced urban-rural income differentials, particularly through restraining urban levels of consumption. 2. Increased agricultural productivity through voluntary adoption of communal modes of production (ujamaa* ‘villages’). In 1974 this was replaced bv the enforced relocation of a large part of the rural population into villages in the strict sense, that is nucleated settlements (Coulson 198 1). education, medical 3. Improved access by rural people to basic social services-primary treatment and clean water supply. of development 4. Increased popular participation in the formulation and implementation plans and projects. I.

The performance of Tanzania’s ‘rural-bias’ development strategy has been frequently subjected to empirical analysis, for example by Green (1974, 1977, 1978), IBRD (1977), Coulson (1978, 1981), and Belshaw (1981). To the original objectives of the Arusha Declaration there was added subsequently the reduction in inter-regional inequality within the rural sector. This was to be achieved through accelerating the pace of development in the remoter or previously neglected regions. To achieve both this objective and increased popular participation at the rural grass roots, sweeping changes were introduced in 1972 in the institutional structure and decision-making processes in central government. The earlier. centralized approaches to regional planning (Jones 1974: Belshaw 1979a) were replaced by a new. decentralized structure which transferred a large proportion of the high-level manpower stock and the allocation of up to 40 per cent of the development budget from the sectoral nlinistries to the regions and districts under the aegis of a new ‘super-nlinistry.-the Prime Minister’s Office (Nyerere 1972: for an administrative assessment. see Collins 1974). What kind of spatial framework for regional planning did Tanzania adopt? Cohen (1978) has identified five commonly used spatial systems: 1. Resource-based development schemes. such as river basin development or land settlement schemes. 2. Multisectoral investment programmes for administratively defined areas. 3. Special projects for peripheral or lagging areas. 4. Area development plans for major cities (and their hinterlands). 5. Development plans based on a hierarchy of contiguous urban central places and their service areas. The regional planning framework in Tanzania is of the second type. Regional plans are constructed at two administrative levels, each of which embraces the total planning space. The lower level is the administrative area called the district: the upper one is the area termed the region. There are 90 districts and 20 regions in mainland Tanzania. In 1977 the system was extended to include three much smaller regions in the Zanzibar islands. A cadre of regional planners has been established at both administrative levels. The key features of the organizational framework are shown in Fig. 2. A major effect of decentralization was to cut the management link between a sectoral ministry’s headquarters and its regional and district officers in the field. except in the case of staff assigned to specially designated ‘national projects’. With that exception. the newly created Prime Minister’s Office became responsible for the activities of all officials at regional level and below and for the initiation, appraisal and monitoring of regional plans. * Ujamaa is a Swahili word for familyhood or togetherness which is used as an equivalent term for socialism.

D. G. R. Belshaw

295

-----7

Diher sector ministries

Committee

Committee

mi

District Management Committee

I

I +r--EDirtrict

j

/

I

I , Ward Executive Committee

1+-----The

!--

District Dewa ment and Planning Committee

Ward Development Committee

Party System ------+ k---The

1 Planning System-+1 ftThe

Figure 2. Key components Tanzania, 1973-S I.

in the organizational

Executive &stem

structure

-+I

of regional

planning

in

The first application of the new regional planning approach occurred when regional estimates were submitted for incorporation in the annual plans (strictly two-year plans rolling annually) for 1972-73 and 1973-74. In 1973 guidelines were issued by the Ministry of Development Planning for the preparation of the third five-year plans (the second five-year plan terminated in June 1974). These emphasized the parallel preparation of regional plans and sectoral plans prior to their incorporation into a consistent national plan. To aid this process, a number of multilateral and bilateral donor agencies were invited to provide planning teams, one to each region, to assist the regions in the

296

Foreign ~lann~~;gassistance to ~~nz~n~a: 197241

preparation of draft five-year development plans. It was intended that the donors would subsequently provide technical and capital assistance for at least part of the regional plan in whose

preparation

they

had participated.

Both the national and regional planning timetables were subject to considerable slippage. The decision was taken in 1973 to defer the commencement of the third five-year plan from 1974 to 1975. The one-year gap was covered using the continuous annual planning procedures. Under this revised timing. the first date set for the submission of regional proposals to the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) was October 1974. This was later revised to December I974 and linallv to February f975. By that time most of the technical assistance teams then in the country had discussed and agreed their proposals with the regional management teams for onward transmission to the PM0 via the TANU* Regional Executive Committees (see Fig. 2). However. by April 1975. when the Ministry of Development Planning (Devplanf began the exercise of reconciling regional and sectoral proposals.? final reports from technical assistance teams had been received for only six regions (Kigoma, Dar es Salaam, Coast, Dodoma, Singida and West Lake). Also, donor regional planning teams had only recently commenced work in Mwanza and Kilimanjaro regions. It was decided to await the receipt of all donor team reports which would contain supporting justification and in some cases proposals additional to or different from those submitted by the TANIJ regional committees. The ‘knock-on’ effect of these delays was the postponement of the commencement of the third plan for another year, until July 1976. The submission of regional five-year development expenditure proposals was repeated again in January 1976, for the 1976-8 1 period. In the event, the regional annual plans for both 1975-76 and 1976-77 were more closely related to past patterns of expenditure than to new departures introduced by either the regional authorities or the technical assistance teams. This reflected both the severe domestic financial constraints in this period and the fact that in only two regions-Kigoma and Tanga-had donor assistance for the implementation of regional plans actually become available. Because of the increasingly severe shortage of domestic development finance, where there were no donor-funds no district regional plan existed. In the light of the earlier adverse experience of attempting to incorporate a complete set of realistically funded regional plans into the national five-year plan. a more flexible approach was adopted for the fourth five-year plan. I98 l-86. The regional authorities have submitted their preference or prqject shopping-lists to the Prime Minister’s Office. but the detailed reconciliation of funded regional plans and sectoral plans is effected only in the shorter cycle of the annual action plan/t~vo-year rolling pfan. This permits the rapid illcorporation of a new regional plan as regional plan funding by an external donor is secured. It is clear. however. that it is very difficult in this situation to design and monitor a comprehensive inter-regional plan framework. In fact, no such framework has yet been adopted in Tanzania (for a proposal for an inter-regional planning methodology for Tanzania. see Belshaw, 1977) and it seems unlikely that attention will be turned in this direction until all regions have become funded. * TANU: Tanganyika African National Union. the sole political party on the Tanzanian mainland. It was replaced by the new party CCM (Chama Cha Mapinduzi) in February 1977. which was formed from TANU and the Afro-Shirazi Party. the former ruling party of Zanzibar. t With the assistance of personnel from the Bureau of Resource Assessment and Land-Use Planning ~BRALUP~ of the University of Dar es Salaam. The exercise was never completed due partly to delays in the sectoral planning work. and partly to the incorporation of Devplan with the Ministry of Finance (the Treasury) in late 1975. The Third Five-year Plan. 1976-8 1. was eventually published

in 1978 without a regional planning component.

D. G. R. Belshaw

297

Finally. in 198 1 a policy decision was taken to give greater weight to plan formulation and funding at the district level. A new set of institutions-District Councils-were created. These are to be given fund-raising powers. through produce cesses, levies on villages, etc. The Area Secretary (see Fig. 2) will assume an advisory position to the District Council rather than the present position as chief executive officer. This reform may be seen as an attempt to move the locus of decision-making both closer to the rural grass roots and away from the civil service to the political party. The tax base in the rural regions, however, is both small and shrinking. As it is not the intention that donor agencies should become involved in formulating or funding district plans, and since only donor-funding can initiate a major development programme, the development planning at the regional level is likely to continue to be the crucial activity.

The regional pattern of plan formulation and implementation

assistance

The chosen method of securing the development assistance required for both formulating and implementing regional development plans has been to request individual multilateral or bilateral donors to each assist an individual region. The possible advantages and dangers inherent in such an approach are reasonably obvious. The outcome in practice has been to expose (i) the varying rural regional planning capabilities of different donors and (ii) their differing willingness to follow through with the provision of medium-term capital and technical assistance. The pattern of foreign donor assistance is shown in Table 1. Regions are arranged in chronological order from the date of first receiving technical assistance for regional plan formulation. The table indicates that all regions had been found a donor, committed at least to assist the planning phase, within the five-year period 1973-77. On the other hand. in 1982 four regions (Coast. Dar es Salaam. Singida and Rukwa) had neither a donor prepared to commit funds nor a suitable up-to-date plan proposal ready for implementation. In effect, successive donor drop-outs have caused a randomized staggering of commencement of regionally conceived development plans. Whereas Kigoma Region. on the one extreme, began implementing its regional plan with World Bank technical and financial assistance in 1974, at the other extreme Singida Region, for example. will be fortunate if it is able to achieve the same position by 1984. Obviously, there is no systematic correlation between relative start dates and inter-regional priorities for assistance. Another result is that a small number of more capable or more committed donor agencies have assumed responsibility for more than one region. In the extreme case. the northwestern quadrant of the country has become largely dependent on assistance from the World Bank, whilst the southeastern area is dependent on the U.K. The pattern originally envisaged had been a much larger nLlmber of donor agencies each assisting one region. The pattern of donor performance is set out in Table 2: failures at the earlier hurdles are shown on the left-hand side with relatively more successful planning performance lying successively to the right. Neither of the two tables in fact shows the larger number of donor agencies which were invited to assist. In the final event no COMECON state participated although several were invited to do so. Centrallv planned economies were represented. if that is the correct word for so idiosyncratic a country, by Yugoslavia and the less-developed countries by India: neither of these followed up with aid for implementation. All other donors were either multilateral agencies. or social democracies. or corporate capitalist economies.

Foreign planning assistance to Tanzania: 1972-81

298

Table 1. Donor agency assistance

to regional planning in Tanzania,

1973-8 1

Region

First regional planning exercise

Implementation with donor support -.

Dates

Agency

Dates

1. Kigoma 2. Tanga 3,iCoast 4. Dar es Salaam 5. Dodoma 6. Lindi 7. Mtwara 8. Morogoro 9. West Lake 10. Iringa 11. Ruvuma 12. Singida 13. Rukwa 14. Arusha 15. Tabora

1973-74 1973-76 1974-75 1974-75 1974-75 1974-75 1974-75 1974-75 1974-75 1974-76 1975-76 1975 1975-79 1975 1975-77

19741975-

16. 17. 18. 19.

1975-76 1975-78 1975-78

IBRD FRC; CIDA CIDA CIDA Finnplanco Finncoi~sult Netherlands DANIDA” FAO/ODG Yugoslavia India BRALUP SIDA” Brokonsult/ IBRD SIDA/IBRD ILACO/lBRD

Mwanza Shinyanga Kiiimanjaro Mbeya

20. Mara

Agency 1BRD FRG

-

Dates

Agency

-

-

1977-

Second regional planning exercise

EEC/AHT

1978-8

1 UNDP

1976-8

1 UKODA

1976-S -

1 UKODA

19811980-8

IBRD 1 IFAD

1979-8 1 USAID 1978-

IBRD/UKODA/

1979-

IBRD

1979-

IBRD Japan

CIDA

Japan NORADO

I98 l-

1976 1977-79

IBRD

1981-

198 l-

IBRD

DANIDAi FAO

-

o These reports were not accepted

by the Tanzanian government Bank for Reconstruction and Development: FRG. Federal Republic of Germany: CIDA. Canadian International Development Agency: UNDP. United Nations Development Programme; UKODA. United Kingdom Overseas Development Administration: DANIDA. Danish International Development Agency: FAO. Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations: ODG, Overseas Development Group. University of East Anglia: EEC, European Economic Community: AHT. Agrar-und Hydrotecknik GMBH: BRALUP. Bureau of Resource Assessment and Land Use Planning. University of Dar es Salaam: SIDA, Swedish International Development Authority: USAID, United States Agency for International Development; ILACO. International Land Development Consultants. NV: NORAD, Norwegian Agency for Development: IFAD. International Fund for Agricultural Development

Key to abbreviations:IBRD. International

Some discussion of the categories of donor planning performance in Table 2 is required to prevent misleading conclusions being drawn. Of the three instances where plan proposals were rejected-in each case by the regional authorities-two concerned very small planning teams which, it was alleged, identified no solutions or projects not already known to the regional management teams. The donors seem to have misjudged the level and quantity of planning expertise required to formulate a relevant plan for rural regions. In the third case (DANIDA in West Lake Region), however, a team with considerable Tanzanian experience made the mistake of presenting one single radical strategy-with no provision for revision in the light of early policy-making feedback or for examining an array of alternative strategies-in a relatively conservative region. Its highly evolved coffee/banana smallholder farming system provided a proven basis for cash incomes and a

D. G. R. Bdsshaw

Table 2. The status

(0 Draft Plan proposals formally rejected

No

of regional development proposals produced by foreign assistance teams: Tanzania 1973-mid- 198 I

f~l~w-up

and plan proposals abandoned de facto

No i~~~rnentation phase to date

Finnplannco DANIDA Netherlands (West Lake) (Lindi) (Morogoro) BRALUP SIDA Finnconsult ~~twara) (Rukwa) (Arusha) NORAD India (Singida) Wbeya) Yugoslavia ~Rlivurna) CIDA (Coast) CIDA (Dodoma) CIDA (Dar es Salaam)

(iv) Continuing discussions over plan content

Japan (Kilimanjaro) UNDP ~Dodoma) USAID (Arusha)

(v) Plan formulation in progress

donor

299 technical

(vi) Implementation of plan proposals in whole or part

IBRD IBRD (Kigoma) (West Lake) FAO FRG (Mbeya) (Tanga) FAO/EEC (Iringa) IBRD (Taboraf UKODA (Lindi) UKODA (Mtwara) IBRD (Mwanza) (Shinyanga) lERD (Mara) IFAD (Ruvuma)

stable food supply, whereas regions with less productive or more risky economic bases, such as Kigoma and Dodoma, have shown less resistance-even initial enthusiasm-for more radicai approaches to agriculture and rural settlement. As a result of these misfortunes, the regional planning approach has derived investment capital from three of the major donor countries assisting Tanzania. a situation only partially remedied by DANIDA’s decision to fund the FAO plan-formulating team in Mbeya Region, which began work in 1981, with the strong likelihood of contributing a major share of the subsequent ~plementatio~ costs. Of the seven plan proposals which have lapsed. due initially to lack of follow-up finance by the original donors (Table 2, col. ii), none was regarded as being of sufficient quality to provide an immediate basis for investment by a new donor. In four cases (the two Finnish plans, the Yugoslavian plan and CODA Dodoma) more detailed planning exercises have recently been completed, while in the other three cases new plans will also have to be prepared. In a similar situation, however, when UNDP was unable to fund the core follow-up project in the FAO planning team’s proposals for Iringa Region, the EEC adopted the project in virtually unchanged form. The lack of implementation follow-up in the case of the Netherlands reflects higher priorities expressed by the Treasury for Netherlands’ assistance to national production projects, coupled probably with the relative prosperity of Morogoro Region. In the case of BRALUP, on the other hand. this University Institute obviously has no capacity for investment or project management. A great deal of basic survey work has been carried out by BRALUP in Rukwa Region. It seems probable that any capital-providing donor will find the basic data useful but will wish to generate additional development strategies to the

300

Foreign planning assisfance to Tanrania:

1972-81

single approach advocated by the BRALUP team. Unfortunately, BRALUP’s involvement in regional planning did not help create a capacity for regional planning training in the University of Dar es Salaam. This failure followed from the decision of the Prime Minister’s Office to wrest the UNDP/UNTCD-assisted Training Institute out of its original University location and to place it in professional isolation in Dodoma. [Other problems arising in the creation and maintenance of the Tanzanian regional planning cadres are discussed in Belshaw (I 979b). 1 With each of the three plan proposals not experiencing a completely smooth ride (Table 2, col. iv), there have been conflicts between the donor planning team and the Tanzanian regional planners in the Prime Minister’s Oflice. The Japanese team have worked on only three sectors in Kilimanjaro Region. which they have failed to integrate and they are also viewed as being very slow in providing capital investment funds. The approach adopted by the UNDP/UNTCD team in Dodoma Region went for rapid implementation of sectoral projects, but provided neither an evaluation of current or recent development experience nor an integrating strategy for the development of the region as a whole. (Progress has been seriously affected also by the deaths of eight UN officials. who were negotiating the draft plan proposals. in an aircraft crash in Tanzania in December 1980.) The recent planning approach evolved by the USAID team in Arusha Region. which has several imaginative and innovative features. has been criticized for being light on effective income-generating content whilst its heavy emphasis on village-level planning-a gain on the popular participation dimension-exceeds the planning and administrative capacity to benefit the majority of villages in the same plan period, thus generating political friction in a pr~ictable manner. The World Bank planning team in Mwanza/Shinyanga had also experienced conflict over team content and ensuing delays. A change in the World Bank’s team leader was necessary before the proposals were accepted by the Prime Minister’s Office. Taking the donors in columns (v) and (vi) of Table 2 together, there are four multilateral and two bilateral agencies. The most frequently occurring single donor is the World Bank. Of all the donor agencies, this institution performs best in terms of the evaluative criteria of commitment to the regional approach. technical competence. financial commitment to implementation and abilitv to meet the criteria of the regional authorities, the regional planners in the Prime Minister’s Office. and the senior policy-makers in the Treasury and Cabinet. The World Bank’s achievement in the strong socialist ethos of Tanzania appears to pose some serious questions about the validity of the ideological stereotyping employed in much recent radical commentary on aid issues.

Some implications planning

of the Tanzanian

experience with donor-assisted

regional development

As explained above, donor-provided capital assistance dominates the investment funds reaching the regions. This may be packaged within a regional plan or as a ‘national project’. some of which are located in several regions (e.g. the national maize programme). Many of the national projects. however. are oriented towards large-scale production managed by a parastatal corporation. such as ranching and irrigation schemes, and mechanized wheat schemes. The donor-assisted regional plans or follow-up projects are the major source of funds and technical expertise specifically oriented towards the villages and the family farming grass roots of the economy. Typically. each regional project has brought in funds in the range US$lO-25 million per four- to five-year phase of implementation. This appears to match the absorptive capacity of the regional planning machinery to use these funds effectively (Commissioner of Planning and Control 198 I).

D. G. R. Belshaw

301

Unequivocal identification of the positive benefits of the regional planning approach to rural development must await the formal evaluation referred to in the Introduction. Amongst alternative approaches for comparison are a continuation of centrally directed sectoral planning, loosely coordinated at regional or district level, and an increase in untied central government subventions to the new district councils. Donor agencies seem more likely to prefer the higher levels of technical competence and financial accountability which either sectoral or regional planning approaches can secure. From the middle 1970s. problems arising from policies for rural settlement. agricultural marketing and industrial pricing and exchange rate policies have seriously damaged the agrarian base of the national economy (Belshaw 1981; Ellis 198 1). One relevant consequence will be the compounded problem of identifying the net contribution made to regional development of the set of donor-assisted regional projects: any beneficial effects have probably been submerged by more powerful non-regional economic variables. Clearly, the Tanzanian approach to regional planning has incorporated a large learning element-for Tanzanians about donor capability and commitment, and for donors and Tanzanians about alternative methodologies and organizational structures. Would it have been wiser to have concentrated the learning process into a more limited area and span of time? A number of smaller areas could have been used as field laboratories. for example. as Kenya attempted to do with its Special Rural Development Programme. Alternatively. a number of donor teams could have formulated competitive plans for one or two regions in the manner employed for engineering or architectural design work. Clearly. also. inadequate attention was paid to the donor’s role in training the cadres of Tanzanian regional planners required to maintain and extend the system. Overall, Tanzania appears to have paid a substantial price in attempting to move too rapidly in the initial stages of its decentralization policy. It is important for both Tanzanians and for other countries following similar approaches that the negative as well as the positive lessons from its experience are clearly identified. Finally. the differential performance by donors raises questions of wider relevance to the aid debate. In his most recent review of agricultural development policy in Tanzania. Coulson (198 I) makes only one reference to the entire decentralization/regional planning approach-a disparaging reference to World Bank support for ‘village plans’ in four regions on the assumed grounds that villagization is attractive to donors ‘such as the World Bank as a way of bringing orderliness into rural investment’ (Coulson 198 1: 82). Experience of the origins and the subsequent problems of Tanzania’s villagization experiment suggests precisely the opposite.* In any case. there is no general evidence that donor funding of small-scale agricultural development is predicated on any particular spatial pattern, very wide variation being found both within and between countries. A more wide-ranging attack on the World Bank’s rural development policies has been launched in the same volume (Williams 1981). This seems to rest on the grounds that all public sector projects in the rural sector are prone to error (current projects are a repetition of colonial government mistakes). that peasants are exploited in cash-crop markets and that ‘the World Bank’s new strategy of rural development and income redistribution is largely rhetoric’. its real objective being to ‘ensure an “open floor” to international trade. finance and investment throughout the capitalist world . ..’ (p. 44). The relative performance of donors in Tanzania in formulating and executing plans attractive to the rural policy at village. district and regional levels raises some doubts about the validity of this sweeping generalization. It is not informed, unfortunately, by any

* The focus on ‘village development’ in the World Bank’s Kigoma Region project was replaced bv a smallLscale farming emphasis in subsequent World Bank-assisted regional plans.

302

Foreign planning assistance to Tanzania: 1972-81

analysis of the causes of differential performance of various rural development projects or strategies, nor is a clearly formulated alternative strategy laid out for comparative assessment. The Tanzanian experience suggests that the technical competence required to design and implement even relatively simple agricultural productivity-raising and income-generating projects supported by appropriate physical infrastructure (rural transport, water) and marketing systems is a relatively scarce resource. The fact that in Tanzania equity objectives can be attained through small-scale agriculture projectsbecause the poor are a landed peasantry or are potentially such through inter-regional migration or resettlement-should not be construed to mean that the World Bank’s agricultural-led projects are a model for rural development strategies in different social structures. Without implying that their design could not be further improved, they do appear, nevertheless, to be reasonably appropriately designed for the Tanzanian economic, social and political contexts. Of course, a more complex conspiracy theory would co-opt the Tanzanian political leadership and the peasantry themselves alongside the capitalist agent World Bank. Whether such an analysis would generate a viable alternative strategy to help meet legitimate human aspirations, however, seems open to serious question.

References Belshaw, D. G. R. (1977) The national and inter-regional policy context of regional-levelplanning in Tanzania. Bureau of Resource Assessment and Land Use Planning, Joint Working Party on Regional Planning Methodologies, Working Paper No. 4 (mimeo). Belshaw, D. G. R. (1979a) Decentralised planning and poverty-focused rural development: intra-regional planning in Tanzania. In Papers in the political economv of Tanzania (K. S. Kim, R. B. Mabele and M. J. Schultheis, eds). Nairobi/London: Heinemann Education. Belshaw, D. G. R. (1979b) Regional planning in Tanzania: problems and opportunities for e4ujty-oriented rural deveiopmenf in the 1980s. Norwich: University of East Anglia, School of Development Studies. Belshaw. D. G. R. (1981) Rural deve~opmeFlt policy and experience in Tanzania, 1967-79. Norwich: University of East Anglia, School of Development Studies. Collins, P. D. (1974) The working of Tanzania’s Rural Development Fund: a problem in decentralisation. In Planning in Tanzania: background to decentralisation (A. H. Rweyemamu and B. U. Mwansasu, eds). Nairobi: East African Literature Bureau. Commissioner of Planning and Control, Prime Minister’s Office (198 I) Verbal communication. Coulson, A. (ed.) (1979) African socialism in practice: the Tanzanian experience. Nottingham. Coulson, A. (1981) Agricultural policies in mainland Tanzania, 1946-76. In Rural development in tropical Africa (J. Heyer, R. Roberts and G. Williams, eds). London: McMillan. Green, R. (1974) Toward ujamaa and kujitegemea: income distribution and absolute pouerty eradication aspects qf the Tanzanian transition to socialism. Brighton: Institute of Development Studies, Discussion Paper No. 66. Green, R. (1977) Income dist~bution and eradication of poverty in Tanzania. In Equity, income and policy (I. L. Horowitz, ed.). New York: Praeger. Green, R. (1978) Strategies and results, 1967-74. In Towards socialism in Tanzania (C. Pratt and B. Mwansasu, eds). Dar es Salaam: Tanzania Publishing House. IBRD (1977) Tanzania: basic economic report (main report and 8 annexes). Washington, DC: IBRD. Jones, D. B. (1974) Rural and regional planning in Tanzania. In Planning in Tanzania: background to decentralisation (A. H. Rwyemamu and B. U. Mwansasu, eds). Nairobi: East African Literature Bureau. Nyerere, J. (1972) Decentralisation. Dar es Salaam: Government Printer. Williams, G. (1981) The World Bank and the peasant problem. In Rural development in tropical Africa (J. Heyer, R. Roberts and G. Williams. eds). London: Macmillan.