Foreign aid, grassroots participation and poverty alleviation in Tanzania: the HESAWA fiasco

Abstract

The study set to examine foreign aid effectiveness in the poverty alleviation in rural Tanzania.More specifically, it sought to investigate the impact of the Health through Sanitation and Water (HESAWA) program among the rural population of Mwanza and Kagera Regions.Twelve villages were studied.HESAWA is an aid-supported program through SIDA and Sweden.The Government of Tanzania contributes marginally through annual budgetary allocations.Although the program's core objectives did not directly target poverty alleviation, its very emphasis on economic growth and social development among the rural poor presupposes poverty alleviation as an indirect final objective.Moreover, from the early 1990s, the objectives of international development cooperation by various donors largely shifted in favour of the war on poverty reduction.Thanks are largely to the conclusion of the Cold War and the end of the double standards behaviour among Western donor governments.In a similar policy shift, HESAWA's overall mandate was enlarged and focused more pointedly on the poverty reduction issues.The study found that the program was, on the whole, a failure.Its philosophical orientation which emphasized people's participation in drawing up the program's objectives, plans and strategies seem to have been hijacked from the very start by the HESAWA bureaucracy as well as some vested national functionaries and powerful local interests.Behind the smokescreen of peasant participation, these interests tended to enjoy most of the program's benefits.Water points and dug wells were arbitrarily located to suit the interests of the powerful local elites.Little wonder that the majority of the poor peasants continued to commute long distances to public water points and wells just as they had done before to traditional wells.The quality and quantity of water were perceived to be poor by most of the peasants that were interviewed.The women, in particular, were dissatisfied with the quality of water, its unreliability and, indeed, its high tariffs.Moreover, HESAWA's failure to institutionalize the practice of participatory decision-making in its program's activities marginalized almost everybody especially women.Indeed, it is important to emphasize that women were identified by HESAWA as one of its primary target population.In addition, it set aside specific instructional programs and mobilization activities for women.In order to ensure full participation of women, fifty percent of the members on the HESAWA Water Committees were supposed to be women.Understandably, more women than men collect water for their respective households.However, the study found that due to generally weak mobilization campaigns and inadequate training programs by HESAWA, fewer women than men participated in the day-to-day running of program's activities.Not surprisingly, the burning concerns of women were hardly addressed by the male-dominated, often inept, Water Committees.Finally, the study found that HESAWA program was not likely to be sustainable in the medium and long runs.Here, two arguments are in order.Firstly, various water technologies that were installed in different villages were neither locally replicable, nor financially affordable.They were not only of different levels of technological sophistication but they were largely inappropriate in a predominantly peasant setting.The fact that well over two-thirds of the water facilities in the phased out villages in the two regions were in disrepair, illustrates what actually is in store for the entire HESAWA program.iii Secondly, and closely related to the previous argument, is the issue of sustainability after donor financial contributions come to an end.According to this study it is not self evident that either the government of Tanzania or the current beneficiaries are likely to fill the void.This reflects the way the programme was poorly conceived, designed and implemented.