On 26 May 2017, Policy Forum dedicated its monthly Breakfast Debate to discussing the National Budget for the financial year 2017/18. Titled “The National Budget 2017/18: What is changing in the education and agriculture sectors,” the debate included two presentations by Makumba Mwemezi, a programme officer from HakiElimu, an education rights organisation, and Fazal Issa a programme officer from ForumCC, a climate change group.

The government should conduct a baseline assessment to determine the targets that the country plans to achieve from the oil and gas sector and set expectations around realistic local content levels.  The argument stemmed from the Policy Forum’s breakfast Debate entitled: “Thinking local: What are the Lessons & Challenges of enhancing Local Content in Tanzania?” that took place on April 28, 2017 in Dar es Salaam.

The government has pledged to consider recommendations suggested by the study entitled, Where is the Money?  Taxation and the state of Africa Mining Vision  (AMV) implementation: A case study of Tanzania and East Africa. The Commissioner of Minerals Eng. Ally Samaje made the promise during the National Launch of Africa Mining Vision Study on Tanzania organized by Policy Forum in collaboration with Tax Justice Network- Africa, Tanzania Tax Justice Coalition and HakiRasilimali on May 15, 2017, Dodoma.

Tanzania’s realization of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and Five Year Development Plan II (FYDP II 2016/17- 2020/21) largely depends on its ability to effectively mobilize sufficient, predictable, reliable and timely domestic financial resources.

In 2017 Policy Forum intends to use community radio stations to inform and raise awareness of the targeted community on issues related to extractive industry, gender, social development goals, accountability and policies related to public resources.

Four community radio stations located in Lindi, Mtwara, Iringa and Kahama have been employed to broadcast PF’s agenda through their programmes. The stations are Mashujaa FM (Lindi), Safari FM (Mtwara), Ebony FM (Iringa) and Kahama FM (Kahama). The radio programmes will commence from the mid-April to November 2017.

Civil society representatives have called upon the government to uphold freedom of expression in the country after a spate of draconian legislation enacted in recent times. Speaking at the Policy Forum’s breakfast Debate titled “Taking Off to the Inclusive Society: Freedom of Expression in Tanzania” that took place on 31st March 2017, Anna Henga of the Legal and Human Rights Centre (LHRC) said that the Cybercrimes Act No.14 of 2015, the Statistics Act of 2015 and the Media Services Act No.

The current financial year is soon ending and discussions on the 2017/18 budget to be concluded in June 2017 are already underway. As usual, we, the members of the Policy Forum (PF) Budget Working Group would like to take this opportunity to share our views regarding the performance of the 2016/17 fiscal year to inform the ongoing deliberations on the national budget, the second under the administration of President John Magufuli.

In this communiqué, the undersigned Non-State Actors (civil society, pastoralist, research, private, farmers’ unions and other stakeholders) champion a call to action and outline recommendations on livestock policy advocacy strategies that take into consideration the unique conditions and opportunities of the livestock sector development in Tanzania. To read more click here.

Policy Forum elected its new Board of Directors during its 2017 Annual General Meeting held in Dar es Salaam on the 17th of March. The outgoing board members are Donati Senzia-PELUM, Charles Meshack -Tanzania Forest Conservation Group (TFCG), Dr.

Stakeholders have commended the government for enacting the The Tanzania Extractive Industries (Transparency and Accountability) Act of 2015 and have called upon it to address some of the challenges such as the law properly addressing the issue of transfer pricing in the extractive sector and mentioning the kinds of sanctions to be given to companies involved in transfer pricing abuses.