After the MDGs: From Social Development to Technoenterprise in Tanzania

^†This paper is based on research in Tanzania carried out between February and August 2012 while the author was a senior fellow at the policy think tank, Research on Poverty Alleviation (REPOA). The views presented here are the author's and do not represent in any way the position of REPOA. Helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper were provided by Marjorie Mbilinyi of the Tanzania Gender Networking Programme (TGNP) and participants in the panel on the Millennium Development Goals organised by Clive Gabay at the 2012 Development Studies Association Annual Meeting in London. In Tanzania, the research benefitted from conversations with many people in a number of organisations working as users and producers of development research. I am grateful for their contributions and to Blandina Kilama for clarifications on the institutional location of poverty monitoring.

Abstract

This article explores how a development paradigm changes in Tanzania as the social sector concerns of the Millennium Development Goal era are practically and politically superseded by a commitment to private sector-driven structural transformation. Changes in the content and orientation of development do not occur as a result of evaluating what kinds of interventions are effective. They are the outcome of concerted efforts of paradigm reconstruction in which the role of development knowledge is pivotal. The process of policy shift entails a reorganisation of the architectures established to support the previous aid regime, including altering the roles of development knowledge producers and civil society organisations. New political relations between business interests and development actors support the increased influence of philanthropic foundations in determining the development agenda, which is sustained by new configurations of development knowledge. These shifts have important political implications for the kinds of policies considered developmental and the extent to which development orthodoxies can be contested.

Extracto – Este artículo explora cómo un paradigma de desarrollo cambia en Tanzania en la medida que las preocupaciones del sector social respecto a la era de las Metas de Desarrollo del Milenio (MDG por sus siglas en inglés) son práctica y políticamente superadas por un compromiso hacia una transformación estructural impulsada por el sector privado. Cambios en el contenido y orientación del desarrollo no ocurren como resultado de una evaluación de qué formas de intervención son efectivas. Son el resultado de esfuerzos concertados de reconstrucción de paradigmas en los que el papel del conocimiento del desarrollo es el pivote. El proceso de cambio de políticas involucra una restructuración de las arquitecturas establecidas para apoyar el régimen de ayuda anterior, incluyendo la alteración de los roles de los productores de conocimiento del desarrollo y las organizaciones de la sociedad civil. Nuevas relaciones entre los intereses mercantiles y los actores del desarrollo respaldan la creciente influencia de fundaciones filantrópicas en materia de determinar la agenda de desarrollo, que es sostenida por una nueva configuración del conocimiento del desarrollo. Estos cambios tienen importantes connotaciones políticas sobre los tipos de políticas consideradas como fundamentales para el desarrollo y sobre la medida en que las ortodoxias del desarrollo pueden ser desafiadas.

Keywords:

• poverty reduction strategy
• paradigm change
• development research
• civil society
• Tanzania

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

^† This paper is based on research in Tanzania carried out between February and August 2012 while the author was a senior fellow at the policy think tank, Research on Poverty Alleviation (REPOA). The views presented here are the author's and do not represent in any way the position of REPOA. Helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper were provided by Marjorie Mbilinyi of the Tanzania Gender Networking Programme (TGNP) and participants in the panel on the Millennium Development Goals organised by Clive Gabay at the 2012 Development Studies Association Annual Meeting in London. In Tanzania, the research benefitted from conversations with many people in a number of organisations working as users and producers of development research. I am grateful for their contributions and to Blandina Kilama for clarifications on the institutional location of poverty monitoring.

1 The explicit convergence of what Gillian Hart (2001) has called Big D and little d development.

2 The contribution of philanthropy in general to developing countries, not restricted to specialist developmental foundations, is much higher, amounting to 59 billion dollars from OECD countries in 2011 (Centre for Global Prosperity, 2013, p. 5).

3 The initial PRS was replaced by the first National Strategy for Growth and the Reduction of Poverty in 2005. The second NSGRP (MKUKUTA II) ran between 2010 and 2015.

4 Figures for 2010–11 from the Development Partners Group tzpg.or.tz.

5 The Poverty Eradication Division was initially in the Vice President's Office. It later moved to the Ministry of Planning and Economic Empowerment and to the Ministry of Finance in 2008 as part of the Department of Economic Affairs. The Planning Commission became part of the President's Office in 2008.

6 SAGCOT Investment Blueprint.

7 On growth corridors as a core component of this new development approach, see Weng et al. (2003) and Kaarhus (2011).

8 According to the SAGCOT Investment Blueprint, the Kilimo Kwanza Growth Corridors Initiative, of which SAGCOT is one,

is an international public-private partnership launched at the World Economic Forum on Africa in May 2010 in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Its mandate is to mobilise private sector investments and partnership to help achieve the goals of Tanzania's Kilimo Kwanza strategy. By catalysing large volumes of responsible private investment, the initiative aims to deliver rapid and sustainable agricultural growth, with major benefits for food security, poverty reduction and reduced vulnerability to climate change.

Members of the partnership represent government, global business, the Tanzanian private sector, farmers, foundations, and donor institutions. It is led by an Executive Committee co-chaired by the Minister of Agriculture of Tanzania, and the Executive Vice President (North and Central Africa) of Unilever.

9 For example, ‘Productive Jobs Wanted’ is peer reviewed by the Executive Director of the think-tank REPOA, a former economist for the University of Dar es Salaam. A contributor to the workshop which produced the report was Servacious Likwelile, an economist who had worked at the University and REPOA before heading the World Bank-funded Tanzania Social Action Fund. He was later appointed as Director of the Poverty Eradication Division in the Office of the Vice President. Likwelile is currently Permanent Secretary to the Treasury in the Ministry of Finance.

10 See, for example, a recent World Bank Country Economic Memorandum for Tanzania Tanzania: Productive jobs wanted (Moriset & Haji, 2014), produced by a team of economists, working with leading Tanzanian economists as policy stakeholders.

11 That is, during the entire period of PRS and MKUKUTA 1 and 2.

12 Modelled on the Malaysian government's development infrastructure, this is a donor-funded initiative hailed as an exemplar of South–South cooperation. It was initiated in 2013.

13 President Kikwete gave the keynote speech in 2012, the Vice President the year after.

14 The idea of the ‘public sphere’ in relation to the creation of democracy derives from the writings of the German philosopher Jurgen Habermas. The idea of civil society as effecting a public sphere as interstitial between family and the state has been extremely influential in development, along with ideas about social capital, informing much of the governance theory and related policy interventions which have dominated programming since the end of the Cold War (Harriss, 2002). For an overview, see Green (2012).

Additional information

Maia Green is Professor of Social Anthropology at Manchester University. Her work explores processes of social transformation in East Africa and the discourses and practices of international development. She has written a number of articles dealing with the politics and institutions of social change from anti-witchcraft movements to civil society organisations. She is the author of The development state: Aid, culture and civil society in Tanzania (James Currey, 2014)