Strengthening Voices

Strengthening Voices
in Tanzania’s drylands
Gaps in capacity
But there are challenges. Traditional pastoralist institutions and local and national
government planning processes remain disconnected—undertaking their own planning
and management separately. There are also major differences in the power balances
between competing interests in the drylands, with large scale investors having far
stronger negotiating capacity than community members. At the heart of the problem is
lack of capacity, underpinned by poor governance.
Many of the tools that local government officers receive training in do not explicitly
address issues of equity or sustainable environmental management, particularly for
dryland areas. Planning tools and systems do not explicitly take into account climate
variability—the key defining features of dynamic dryland ecosystems. And because
pastoralists are not sufficiently involved in local government planning processes, village
and district level plans often do not benefit from, or support, their productive strategies
in the face of climate variability—including drought.
As Tanzania recognises the importance of pastoralism to national growth, and as
pastoralists see the value of participating, reformed local government planning processes
are a way of bringing the two sides together. But the knowledge and capacity gap on
both sides will need to be bridged.
“Our intention is to invest in people, to provide training. Our aim is to
explain and provide arguments based on the science of pastoralism
and the dynamics of the pastoral system itself. Once trained, people
can then use their democratic and constitutional rights to argue their
case because they now understand not only their rights but also
the dynamics of their own pastoral systems. For example, they can
explain why people move from one place to another.”
Alais Morindat, Coordinator of the KDSC/IIED project at TNRF
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Pastoralist advocacy and training, and
the need to operate at three levels
In northern Tanzania a project has been underway since 2007 entitled Sustainable
environmental management and poverty reduction in the drylands of Tanzania, funded
by Irish Aid, CORDAID and GORTA. This project, also known as the ‘Strengthening
Voices’ initiative, is the first phase of a longer-term process to build the capacity
of pastoralists and local government to implement Tanzania’s national growth and
development strategies. And to do so in a way that will incorporate climate change.
The project is designed to be sustainable over the long term. It uses tools and
approaches that are transferable and cost effective, enabling them to be taken up in
the future by local government and civil society organisations (CSOs) in other parts
of Tanzania and the East African region more widely. After three years the project is
already beginning to demonstrate how appropriate and targeted training can make a
real difference to community, district and national land use planning.
The project is implemented through partnerships. The Tanzania Natural Resources
Forum (TNRF) provides a platform for civil-society, conservation, research and private
sector organisations based in Tanzania to debate policy options for reconciling
competing interests over natural resources. TNRF does not work at the grass roots
level itself but it facilitates research and informed advocacy.
The Tanzanian Pastoralists and Hunter Gatherer Organisation (TAPHGO) and
the Pastoralist Indigenous NGOs Forum (PINGOs) are both pastoralist umbrella
organisations with dozens of member organisations. They work in advocacy—
lobbying for pastoralists on key issues such as land rights and tenure. The Ujamaa-
Community Resource Trust (U/CRT) and the Pastoralist Women’s Council
(PWC) are two community-based pastoral organisations working on pastoral rights
in northern Tanzania.
Close to Arusha is the MS-Training Centre for Development Cooperation (MS-
TCDC), which has been in partnership with the Kimmage Development Studies
Centre (KDSC) in Dublin, Ireland, since 1994. The centre runs accredited training
programmes aimed at upgrading the knowledge and skills of programme officers and
policy advocates from eastern and southern Africa. The International Institute for
Environment and Development (IIED) has a long history of working with pastoralists
in Tanzania, and since 2002, in partnership with Resource Conflict Institute
(RECONCILE), has been running a regional training course at MS-TCDC known as
the “Pastoralism and Policy Options in East Africa” (PPO) course. The course itself
was developed from one that has been field-tested and run in the Sahel region of
West Africa since 2000.
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