Tanzania Advocacy Partnership Program (TAPP)

TAPP worked closely with national and local advocacy organisations and networks to: develop an indigenous cadre of master trainers and capacity builders; build local organisational, managerial, and financial capacity; and equip local organisations with the requisite skills for sustaining advocacy efforts.

The Pact approach begins with applying their own organisational capacity assessment (OCA) methodology, which was adapted to the Tanzanian CSO context at the national, regional, district, and community levels. A Pact-trained pool of Tanzanian facilitators applied the OCA to establish a baseline of CSO organisational and advocacy capacities. This was done to enable the Pact team to design interventions that address common obstacles encountered by Tanzanian CSOs in representing community interests through public consultative mechanisms.

Based on OCA results, Pact provided training and technical assistance in the areas of general organisational development, advocacy, financial management, governance, and leadership. After a year of capacity strengthening interventions, Pact conducted a second capacity assessment with its partners. According to Pact, these annual capacity building assessments were key in the success of the project. Organisational progress of the participating CSOs was measured against eight areas: financial management, governance, management, sustainability, advocacy, external relations, human resource management, and service delivery.

The programme also aimed to strengthen the non-governmental organisation (NGO) sector by raising awareness among the CSO community about its role in a democratic society. Pact’s Legislative Roadmap is a manual for CSOs presenting the complexities of the policy-making and legislative processes "in clear layman's terms." The Roadmap, published in Kiswahili and English, identifies points in the legislative process that can be windows of opportunity for advocacy and offers a toolkit of possible actions.

One example of a campaign developed through TAPP was the
Shangalia/Celebrate NGOs initiative to promote the work and messages of Tanzanian NGOs. These messages, developed after conducting focus groups to discern the public’s opinion about NGOs, were then posted either on billboards or posters throughout the country.

TAPP provided sub-grants for advocacy campaigns promoting, for example, women’s leadership in government, legislation about the NGO bill and Disabilities Act, NGO efforts in natural resource management, advocacy tools such as Pumua, a film about the justice system and vulnerable children, and civic education on poverty reduction (Mkukuta), to name a few.

TAPP also encouraged creative alliance building between civil society and the media, including funding training and travel opportunities for over 75 media representatives to learn about the work undertaken by Tanzanian CSOs. Locations visited included Makete, Manyara, Arusha, Zanzibar, Tabora, and Coast, where the media gathered story material to report on the ways that advocacy organisations work with the communities to address social issues at the local level. Some of the stories that were published as a direct result of TAPP focused on people living with HIV/AIDS, vulnerable children and orphans, female genital mutilation, land use around game parks, and NGO engagement in the Tanzanian Poverty Reduction Strategy process. The linking of journalists and community-based advocates was considered to have raised awareness about important issues and stories.

Democracy and Governance.

According to the organisers, the project began with a handful of advocacy partners but by the time of its completion included 42 organisations including NGOs, business associations, and faith-based organisations. Though the TAPP activities were concluded on September 30 2005, USAID/Tanzania continues to support and build the capacity of Tanzanian advocacy organisations throughout its activities in democracy and governance, including e-education, health and HIV/AIDS, environment and natural resources management, and economic growth.