This week the Tanzanian and Swedish governments are attending a high level meeting in Busan, South Korea, to discuss development aid effectiveness. But to ensure that development aid actually promotes development, governments must also deal with the illicit flows of capital that leaves developing countries every year – a sum that is ten times larger than the annual amount of total global development aid.

Who we are: We are citizens and civil society organizations from around the globe, united by the shared conviction that inclusive and open public budgets are critical to achieving a world in which all human beings enjoy their full human rights – civil, political, social, economic, cultural and environmental.

We, the Inter-faith Standing Committee on Economic Justice and Integrity of Creation and members of Policy Forum, having gathered at the alternative Mining Conference in Arusha from the 19th and 20th October 2011 have deliberated for two days on the negative impacts of mining on communities and the environment, we issue a call to the Tanzania government and parliament to live up to their mandated roles by acting on behalf of communities who have not received tangible benefits from mining activities that have claimed chunks of their ancestral lands.

On the 20th and 21st of September 2011, Policy Forum Secretariat was invited to attend the EITI reports analysis training. The training took place in Accra -Ghana at the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration (GIMPA) where the Africa Regional Extractive Industries Knowledge Hub is situated.

Policy Forum was among representatives of Civil Soceity Organisations from five countries were invited by the International Budget Partnership (IBP) in February 2010 to deliberate on ConstituencyDevelopment Funds (CDFs), a decentralized funding scheme in which the central government transfers funds to each constituency for local development projects.

As part of our strategic and selective engagement in policy processes, the Policy Forum’s Local Government Working Group (LGWG) together with KEPA and the Embassy of Finland, on the 27th of August 2009 organised a one-day dialogue on fostering local democracy in Tanzania.

Finance and Economic Affairs Minister Mustafa Mkulo is this week expected to table in Parliament the  2009/10 budget estimates for the next fiscal year. Observers will be looking to see if it is development oriented, if it really is 'Agriculture First' as the theme for this year’s budget suggests, or whether it is equitable. From the Budget Guidelines, the draft briefs to Parliamentary Finance and Economy Committee (PFEC) and other sources, we are able to preview the 2009/10 budget:

What should we expect from the budget?

Agenda Participation 2000, a Policy Forum member organisation, is to develop and host an anti-Corruption tracker system in Tanzania. The system which is unique and the first of its kind in Tanzania, is aimed at increasing the level of transparency in the fight against corruption. The anti corruption tracker system will be an electronic online system tracking and documenting all reported and available cases of corruption since the year 2000.

In 1993 a portion of land in the Serengeti District was registered as yamuma Village. However, in the following year, 1994, a big chunk of the village was taken up to make the Ikorongo Game reserve.

In Africa, 200 million people are aged between 15 and 24 years, comprising more than 20% of the population. Africa’s population is growing fast and is experiencing a slow demographic transition, which will increase the pressure countries face with job creation. The large majority of the youth lives in rural areas and is mostly employed in agriculture, for which they account for 65% of total employment.