The organization’s four expected outcomes for the 2008-2011 period are:
1. Citizens are informed about basic education for liberation and democracy,
2. The quality of public debate is deepened,
3. Citizens are inspired to take action, and hold the government to account,
4. Government and other public institutions become more responsive to citizens’ views and demands.
HakiElimu’s work is grounded in the belief that major changes are driven by social movements where citizens were the proponents of change, as decision-makers are far more likely to respond to public pressure rather than to evidence or arguments standing alone. HakiElimu realizes its goals through:
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Media Unit which disseminates accurate information about education and democracy, facilitates investigative journalism, creates opportunities for the public to have a voice, and commissions opinion polls;
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A Policy Monitoring and Accountability program within CE enables Friends and other citizens to monitor, document, hold debates, take action and communicate any feedback on policy implementation and its impact in their communities.
It conducts research on primary and secondary education, budget simplification and analysis, and also monitors newspaper columns, relevant working documents and the implementation of relevant government policies. Since 2008 HakiElimu has expanded its budget work and has mainstreamed it into all units, following on a realization that the government’s budget is closely related to all of the organization’s work. The budget work undertaken in the different units is overseen by the Policy Analysis and Advocacy Unit.
HakiElimu’s education budget work:
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The organization analyzes the national education budget, together with policies, directives, plans, etc., at the national and sub-national level, with a specific attention to aspects that affect the quality of education (e.g., materials, teacher training, capitation grant). It uses its result in various forms of advocacy and in creating awareness among citizens and members of parliament.
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The organization reviews the Auditor General’s report, summarizes it, and translates the summary into Swahili, making it widely available so that other organizations and ordinary citizens can question authorities, and legislators can raise appropriate question in sessions of the legislature.
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This past year the organization has started up a social accountability monitoring project, training FoE, and other CSOs in the use of a simple tool to track education funds at the district level and to monitor projects’ performance where they are occurring.
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The organization also trains FoE, district officials and citizens in public expenditure tracking at the school and district levels through a simple tool that combines plans, policy, budgets and programs. The focus is on both primary and secondary education.
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The organization has also recently introduced a youth program, training youth to do simple policy and budget analysis, to encourage and enable them to fight back against corruption, and to demand and expect government accountability.
HakiElimu works first and foremost within the framework of Tanzania’s National Education and Training Policy (1995), which is a good policy. When appropriate and useful, the organization also works with the right to education and other standards in the international human rights treaties that Tanzania has ratified.
The problem in Tanzania is less with the education policies themselves, and mostly with their implementation. In 2000-2001, for example, Tanzania (re)introduced universal primary education, which guarantees accessibility and availability of primary education for all. The government, with community contribution, built a large number of new schools, and enrollment in schools has increased dramatically. However, the government did not plan properly to ensure that there would be a corresponding increase in the number of trained teachers, so the quality of teaching is quite poor, and the student: teacher ratio has increased dramatically. In addition, children in some remote areas still have to walk 5-15 kilometers to the nearest school, and many schools have no latrines, no materials, and at the secondary school level, no labs. Transportation to school remains a substantial problem even in urban areas.
Management of the education sector is not good. In particular, there is mismanagement and corruption in the use of education funds, with many schools, for example, receiving only a portion of the funds allocated to them.
The most significant challenge that HakiElimu faces in its education budget work is access to information. The Ministry of Finance does not make budget documents available in a timely fashion, and bureaucrats often act as if the public has no right to information. In addition, there is a lack of capacity at the sub-national level to make information available, as those levels of government often themselves do not receive the necessary information from the national government in a timely fashion, if at all.
While the government tends to view HakiElimu as in opposition, it provides information to international donors and development partners, so that HakiElimu often relies on the latter for access to the budget and related information it needs.
HakiElimu has found that government officials themselves often lack the capacity to analyze the budget and/or to package it for different audiences, and are quite defensive in response to requests from citizens for budget information. Very few NGOs and CBOs can work on the budget, as the latter not only uses technical terms, but is published in English, while Swahili, in addition to being an official language, is the one most commonly used in the country. This is one reason why HakiElimu devotes considerable attention and resources to making budget information readily available in Swahili.
November 2009
1 HakiElimu’s work with audit reports is described in greater detail in IBP’s publication, Our money, Our responsibility, pp. 120-125. Available at: http://www.internationalbudget.org/resources/expenditure/index.htm
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