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.

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.

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.

Findings show that civil society organizations (CSOs) can play an important role in enhancing transparency and good governance in developing countries by contributing to increased public debate on issues surrounding the formulation and implementation of government budgets as well as in supporting greater transparency of public revenues.

H.E Jeroen Verheul , Ambassador of the Kingdom of Netherlands in Tanzania today paid a courtsey call on Policy Forum to familiarise with the work of the network and to learn more about Civil Society advocacy efforts in Tanzania.

On the right is PF Coordinator Semkae Kilonzo , H.E Jeroen Verheul (Middle) and on the left is Neema Matafu, Embassy of Netherlands Policy Officer for Public Administration and Economic Policies.

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.

The government has been called upon to strongly support Public Private Partnerships (PPPs) at the local level so that local authorities and their staff can become more focused on their core mandate of providing essential services to the public as the private sector complements these efforts by helping to reduce the financial and technical resource gap needed for socio-economic development.

The government is determined to put in place robust strategies that will help promote community engagement in all sectors of the Tanzanian economy, the country's National Economic and Empowerment Council (NEEC) said last week.

Speaking at a meeting with Policy Forum members, Neema Lugakingira, the Acting Director of Local Content and Investments at NEEC said that in order to promote efficiency, the government has moved its local content enhancement work to the Prime Minister's Office.

Policy Forum decided to dedicate October’s breakfast debate to the issue of CSO engagement with the newly-elected administration. Titled “What Civil Society Organizations Expect in the New Government?,” the debate on Friday 30th October, 2015 focused on the manifeso that CSOs produced as part of their citizen sensitization programmes.

The government needs to come up with a resettlement policy that addresses the needs of people displaced due to investment initiatives established in the country. This was said by Dr.