This Joint Staff Advisory Note reviews Tanzania’s Second National Strategy for Growth and Reduction of Poverty (NSGRP–MKUKUTA II) (2010/11–2014/15). MKUKUTA II provides an operational framework for achieving the Millennium Development Goals and Tanzania’s Development Vision 2025, which aims to transform Tanzania into a middle-income country. Key recommendations are to expand fiscal space through improving spending efficiency and enhancing domestic revenue mobilization in line with its potential, decisive actions to improve the investment climate, and better specification of costing and realistic financing.

The International Development Law Organization (IDLO) and the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) assessed the legal frameworks that govern land-use activities and investments in Tanzania. The policy, institutional and legal frameworks are well developed although implementation and enforcement remains weak due to ambiguities in the law and a general lack of supportive incentives. This Legal Assessment report for Tanzania examines four key challenges to the attainment of sustainable land-use investments. These comprise: Enforcement of environmental and social safeguards Tanzania has made progress in implementing the Environmental Management Act by ensuring greater compliance with the Environmental Impact Assessment regulations although exceptions exist in the construction sector, and mining legislation that often enables the government to circumvent important land tenure safeguards. Incentives for sustainable investments in the legal framework A lack of incentives exists despite the creation of the Tanzania Investment Centre, the adoption of an Investment Guide in 2013, and the incorporation of sustainability considerations into laws and policies governing investments in the agriculture, energy, and forestry and mining sectors. Land tenure security Tanzania’s land law framework now includes formal recognition of customary title and the reservation of land under the category of village land exclusively for Tanzanians although improvements are still needed in terms of processes of consultation and compensation. Public awareness and lack of access to information Awareness of natural resources and investment policies, legislation and regulations is generally low amongst rural communities as well as Ward executive officers, village leaders and village land committee members. Rural radio represents their most important source of information

With the rise of the ‘knowledge for development’ paradigm, expert advice has become a prime instrument of foreign aid. At the same time, it has been object of repeated criticism: the chronic failure of ‘technical assistance’ – a notion under which advice is commonly subsumed – has been documented in a host of studies. Nonetheless, international organisations continue to send advisors, promising to increase the ‘effectiveness’ of expert support if their technocratic recommendations are taken up. This book reveals fundamental problems of expert advice in the context of aid that concern issues of power and legitimacy rather than merely flaws of implementation. Based on empirical evidence from South Africa and Tanzania, the authors show that aid-related advisory processes are inevitably obstructed by colliding interests, political pressures and hierarchical relations that impede knowledge transfer and mutual learning. As a result, recipient governments find themselves caught in a perpetual cycle of dependency, continuously advised by experts who convey the shifting paradigms and agendas of their respective donor governments. For young democracies, the persistent presence of external actors is hazardous: ultimately, it poses a threat to the legitimacy of their governments if their policy-making becomes more responsive to foreign demands than to the preferences and needs of their citizens.

Across the globe, there are more than four thousand policy institutes, or think tanks, that research or advocate for economic and social development. Yet the relationship between these organizations and the policies they influence is not well understood. How Think Tanks Shape Social Development Policies examines case studies drawn from a range of political and economic systems worldwide to provide a detailed understanding of how think tanks can have an impact on issues such as education policy, infrastructure, environment and sustainable development, economic reform, poverty alleviation, agricultural and land development, and social policy. Each chapter provides an overview of the approaches and organizational structures of specific think tanks, as well as the political, economic, and social opportunities and the challenges of the environments in which they operate. The contributors study the stages of innovative think-tank-aided strategies implemented in highly industrialized world powers like the United States and Russia, emerging countries such as China, India, Brazil, and South Korea, and developing nations that include Ethiopia, Kenya, and Tanzania. Accompanied by an extensive introduction to contextualize the history and theory of policy institutes, this comprehensive comparison of policy success stories will be instructive and transferable to other think tanks around the globe. Contributors: Assefa Admassie, Celso Castro, Kristina Costa, Francisco Cravioto, Marek Dabrowski, Matt Dann, He Fan, Rajeev Gowda, Oh-Seok Hyun, Christian Koch, Jitinder Kohli, R. Andreas Kraemer, Elena Lazarou, William Lyakurwa, Ashwin Mahesh, Florencia Mezzadra, Partha Mukhopadhyay, Mcebisi Ndletyana, Sridhar Pabbisetty, Miguel Pulido, Marco Aurelio Ruediger, María Belén Sánchez, Dmitri Trenin, Samuel Wangwe, Vanesa Weyrauch, Maria Monica Wihardja, Rebecca Winthrop, Wang Xiaoyi.