The Government of Tanzania has made commitments to provide and safeguard human rights such as the ratification of several core human rights conventions as well as put in place national policies favoring a human rights-based approach to development but there are challenges in concretizing them in practice. When it comes to children’s rights, enforcement also seems to be a shortfall.

The creative and cultural sectors face policy challenges that lead to inconsistent engagement between sector players and relevant ministries/institutions, subsequently apparent unbalanced development of creative and cultural sector; disorganized, mismanaged, fragmented associations in creative and cultural industries, low entrepreneurship skills and non-existent funding mechanisms for the sector. These challenges result from weak and non-existence of appropriate creative and cultural policy.

The 2017/2018 CAG’s report has indicated areas of corruptive and fraudulent transactions amounting to TZS 207.12 billion. The amount is derived from weakness in the management of transit goods TZS 7.975 billion, human resources and pensions 2.59 billion, procurement and contract management TZS 133.17 billion, the expenditure management and budget execution TZS 54.48 billion and in management and collection of own source revenues TZS 8.66 billion.

The tax system can directly reduce inequality by redistributing income from rich to poor, by taxing the rich more heavily and giving the government revenues to spend on public services. In Tanzania, there is a challenge of a large and increasing informal sector which has often gone untaxed hence subjecting a higher tax burden on the few within the formal sector. This in a way contributes to inequality because the informal sector partly constitutes relatively High Net Worth Individuals (HNWIS) whose incomes are not often subjected to tax.

Back in 2006, the Integrated Labour Force Survey (ILFS) noted that the number of informal sector operators in Tanzania was growing fast and their share to the GDP was significant with implications on Government loses in revenue if they were not taxed.

The Embassy of Switzerland in Dar es Salaam through the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) has launched the third phase of its Social Accountability Programme (SAP) which provides support to key national Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) who are working to improve accountability in Tanzania.

Stakeholders of the wildlife conservation have urged the government to align conflicting Acts that affect wildlife and tourism sectors for better conservation and management. The stakeholders voiced their concern during the Policy Forum’s February Breakfast Debate entitled “Challenges of Managing Natural Resources with Conflicting Legislation: The Case of The Wildlife Act”. One among the conflicting legislation is the Wildlife Act and Mining legislation. The chairperson of Tanzania Parliamentarian Friends of Environment (TAPAFE), Hon.

Development and the use of social media has been increasing all over the world serving the purpose of communication and information sharing amongst the public and institutions including the government, triggering the state to adopt social media as one of the important alternatives to reach out to the masses. In Tanzania, this also seems the case as the government attempts to accomplish various e-government goals providing public services to its citizens.

Stakeholders in Tanzania have been reminded that in order to fight corruption successfully, it was important to bear in mind that the vice was more of a structural problem than one of individual moral turpitude, and as such, it can only be addressed by comprehensive structural change.

A recent study by Restless Development, a Policy Forum member organization, indicates that, three (3) out of ten (10) youth agree that there are laws and procedures related to good governance and accountability that enable people to hold their leaders to account. This was said during the last week of October at the morning public dialogue dubbed as Policy Forum Breakfast Debate held at the British Council, Dar es Salaam.