TANZANIA’S LOCAL GOVERNMENT REFORMS: What connection to town planning?

By Ron McGill BSc MBA PhD MRTPI Chief Technical Adviser, Tanzania Local Government Reform Programme II, since January 2011

Town planning – towns or planning?

The RTPI’s ‘mediation of space; the making of place’ is, to me, a mantra that captures the very

essence of town planning. However, when you consider the term ‘town planning’ (something I

graduated in at Heriot-Watt in 1974), we were already struggling with the question: “are we

dealing with towns as ‘a social way of life’ or planning as ‘technical problem solving’”?’i This was a

time of the architectural design dominance of town planning (i.e. town planning as an off-shoot or

extension of architecture; “what can an undergraduate town planning degree teach you?”). In

1968 (when I applied), there were only three such courses in Great Britain: apart from Heriot-Watt,

at Newcastle and Manchester universities.

A spate of publications in the early 1970s started to shift the emphasis from ‘towns’ to ‘planning’.

Three spring to mind at this moment: McKinsey’s Sunderland Study (see ‘Other References’, item

1), Scotland’s Paterson Report (preparing for the country’s process-based local government

reforms in 1975 – compared to the English and Welsh Bains Report a year earlier, focusing on

structures) and the still superb Local Government and Strategic Choice by Friend and Jessop:

introducing an operations research (OR) approach to urban problem solving, using Coventry as the

case study (see ‘Other References’, item 2).

Take a mental leap to the world’s 50 Least Developed Countries (LDCs)ii, many of which I have

worked in since Malawi (1989-93), as a consultant, resident adviser and a senior adviser in the UN’s

Capital Development Fund (UNCDF) in New York (2001-09). In this LDC context, the RTPI mantra

appears to take a back seat as one deals with more fundamental things: in essence, the challenge

of simply delivering infrastructure and supporting services to people who desperately need both.

This challenge is captured in Institutional Development: a Third World City Management

Perspective; republished as City Management… (see ‘Publications’, item 1). As the inside flap cover

of the first edition and the back cover of the second, state:

‘The challenge of rapid urbanization and its attendant demands for infrastructure and services

confronts every local government in the developing world. The weakness of that local government

compounds the enormity of the challenge… The book concludes with a synthesis of city

management and its institutional development imperatives… While the first part of the text is

theoretical in nature, its heart lies in the challenge of converting theory into practice; turning ideas

into action. Local government practitioners know that the hardest part is to achieve performance

in infrastructure and service provision, for development.’

Take another leap and we are now in Tanzania. I am into my second year as the chief technical

adviser of the country’s local government reform (LGR) programme. This is after leaving UNCDF

(Achieving Results: Performance Budgeting in the LDCs – ‘Publications’, item 2) and 18 months in

Ethiopia as performance budgeting adviser to its finance ministry.

Local government reform (LGR) – technical problem solving

In the modern era (since 1995), there have been two waves of LGR in Tanzania. The first was

spawned by the civil service reform programme (CSRP). That programme recognised, among other

things, that there is no point in restructuring government (Organisation) if you do not develop the

processes to make it work better (Efficiency): O&E.iii The processes became known as performance

budgeting (PB).iv CSRP also recognized that if everyone concerned with participation in local

development was serious about a participatory approach to local development, a system for

participation had to be created by CSRP through its regional reform work.

Local amenity: Where to get food, phone cards and beer in Dodoma. Turn 180 degrees and you see ‘New Development’ (photo on page 3 below)

One was known as opportunities and obstacles to development: O&OD. That became an offshoot

to the regional reforms, while the new CSRP planning and management guide was being prepared.

Meanwhile where previously the regions were the development arm of government, with over 250

staff, their development personnel were now ‘ring-fenced’ and eventually transferred to local

government. This left a co-ordinating and LG-supporting regional administration of 88 people. This

was practical decentralization; transferring the local development process to the lowest level of

competent government. Executive agencies were also created in order to remove operational

aspects of service delivery from central ministries (such as the government printer, central

procurement and the meteorological service). This allowed the ministries to focus on policy,

strategy and general quality control of the deconcentrated parts (the regions) and the

decentralized parts (LG) of government. The last piece of CSRP achievement was the approval of a

policy and strategy for LGR. In 1998, this became LGR programme 1(LGRP 1).

LGRP 1 turned into an eight year effort to give life to a moribund LG system. The socialist, centralist

tradition brought into being by the founding father of the nation, Mwalimu(the teacher), President

Julius Nyerere, achieved much that was good; centralization being necessary immediately after

independence, in order to consolidate meagre locally available professional and technical expertise

(a pattern throughout Harold Macmillan’s “winds of change” Africa at this time. However, it

created a generation of dependence on the state and particularly, the centre of it. With the

transfer of the development function from regions (the former regional development directorates)

to local government authorities (LGAs), conditions were in place to give LGAs the freedom and

dynamism to become genuinely decentralized development entities.

The major thrusts in LGRP 1 were on the decentralization of fiscal and human resources. On the

fiscal side, two initiatives were introduced. First was the idea that no locally determined

development can take place unless there is capital funding available to lubricate and give incentive

to the process. A local development fund was created. It was formula based (to accommodate

geographical, socio-economic disparities) and linked to performance. That word would actually

mean ‘capacity to perform’ (e.g. is there a plan in place, a functioning council, an internal audit

service?). The other ambition was to decentralize HR management, whereby councils would have

the freedom to ‘hire and fire’.

New Development: African Dreams Hotel, Dodoma, the city in the centre of Tanzania, home to the parliament and the new university, already with 14,000 students, with a target of 40,000

From a planner’s perspective, the issue was that, in the context of ‘problem solving’, a large

technical team was recruited. It operated as a separate entity, though in consultation with the

parent ministry. It was a parallel system, charged to deploy donor funds most efficiently to achieve

the outputs required of the programme. It made headway on the fiscal side of things with not only

a formula-based and performance-tested capital transfer system but also, a formula based

recurrent funding mechanism.

The review of LGRP 1 conducted by the Government of Tanzania (published in 2008) came to two

conclusions. First much had been achieved, particularly on the fiscal transfer side. Secondly, it was

conceded that more needed to be done. That was the justification for LGRP 2.

LGRP 2 perpetuated the technical problem-solving of LGRP 1. However, one crucial decision arose

from the LGRP 1 review. It was agreed to ‘mainstream’ the technical advisory support of the new

programme into the parent ministry. In the developing world, there was an increasing backlash

against technical support that operated in parallel or outside (‘outwith’ for Scottish readers and

writers like me) government. In practical terms, this meant that the new TA teamv would conduct

all business through counterparts and procure goods and services through government

procedures. (A counterpart is the government official whom the technical adviser (TA) is to work

with and build that person’s capacity to perform better. Capacity building is a central feature of the

resident TA model, as opposed to the consultant, who flies in, produces a report and leaves.)

Learning by doing: Integrated development planning for Tanzanian local government reform officials in Singida region, focusing on poverty, environment, local economic development and unplanned locations.

The mainstreaming model in LGRP 2, while completely justified philosophically, was soon

questioned. Not because of a lack of commitment: every TA had his or her identified counterpart.

It was that they still had all their normal government duties to perform. This ‘fault line’ was

identified in the TA team’s inception report. In Malawi, by contrast, my experience was that the

counterparting model worked because a shadow chief executive was appointed. In essence, his job

was to ‘shadow’ the expatriate (me), learn on-the-job, receive three months’ technical training (at

Strathclyde University), a three-month placement (in Crawley – a new town, cleverly, to match

Lilongwe’s new town Garden City ambitions), return to Lilongwe and gradually, assume the

complete duties of the chief executive role. He duly did.

Nevertheless, in Tanzania, while the technical problem solving approach moved on (within an

imperfect mainstreaming modality), early in the second year, planning (as a spatial concept) was

being introduced.

Planning – a social way of life?

Organizationally specific capacity building (getting LGAs to be able to plan and budget in order to

deliver…) is now being seen by the ministry responsible for local government as a robust prelude to

the ‘mediation of space’. The model being pursued is that of an integrated development plan (IDP)

for each LGA and supporting region (the region dealing with only those developments of region-

wide or inter-district significance). An IDP is to capture three sets of characteristics. It is to be

geographically defined and environmentally sensitive. It is to embrace the institutional spectrum in

the local development process (from NGO and business to central government and its agencies,

through the integrating prism of local government). It is to express a holistic approach to local

development, defining each funding entity’s specific contribution to the community-supported

development ambitions, in the plan. A diagram best illustrates the idea.

Figure 1: Government of Tanzania: Local Government Reform Programme IIvi

Thus, the ‘technical problem solving’ side of things has been dominant to this point (LGRP 1 and

LGRP 2 to date). Now, the spatial aspects of ‘a social way of life’, in terms of the ‘mediation of

Integrated (District / Regional) Development Plans

Geographically defined (See Government of Tanzania: Local Government Reform Programme II

PMO-RALG Integrated Development Plan Checklist, 2012)

Private sector

Local government

Central government

Communities

Business Districts / municipalities

Regions /

executive agencies

Ministry HQs

Investment decisions (Organisationally and household

specific)

Development Strategies and

Budgets Organisationally Specific (See PMO-RALG Planning and Budgeting Handbook,

2012)

Development Strategies and Budgets

Organisationally Specific

Development Strategies and

Budgets Organisationally

Specific

space’ are taking hold. These are very early days but LGs, supported by the parent Ministry, are

inching forward with the first test of the IDP model. Geddes’ survey concept has biological, organic

and even ecological undertones, understanding before intervening (see ‘Other References’, item

3). The ambition is to Design with Nature, quoting McHarg’s book title (‘Other References’, item 4).

Those of us advising LGs on this method want to define the key variables to be nurtured and

protected: in land use terms, water basins, forest reserves, natural habitats and the like (with

equivalent land-use definitions for towns and cities; adding up to built-up areas that are ‘sound’ as

opposed to others which are ‘unsound’). The theory is that by defining what should be husbanded

(whether rural ecology or urban socio-economic and physical fabric), we define where change

might occur, with the least damage and the maximum benefit, or citing Geddes again:

‘conservative surgery’ – cutting out the bad and letting the good flourish.vii

I suggest that from a development planner’s perspective, integrated development planning must

achieve two things. First, the process must work with the grain of the development environment

the planner’s organisation (an LGA; a region) is dealing with. Secondly, it must organise the

instruments of intervention in such a way that the LGA or region doing the planning, is in a fit state

(organizationally and financially) to do so. Thus, development management in developing countries

is concerned with both the geographical (or spatial) - building infrastructure and services to meet

the needs of districts, regions, towns and cities and the institutional: building the capacity to

perform.

The best Italian food in Dodoma, Sipe cafe, run by a Maasai wife (Sipe) and her Italian MD husband. Highly recommended both for the food and the eclectic taste in music

Successful development management is always conceptually holistic. At its core, this holism requires

that development issues and institutional responses be considered simultaneously, to ensure a

sustained strategic and operational dynamic; the integrated structure of development planning.viii The

acid test of this planning is whether it provides targeted infrastructure.ixThis contributes not only to

economic development but the availability of infrastructure specifically has a primary influence on

spatial distribution of growth at district and regional levels. Private investment (town and city building)

tends to follow the availability of network or trunk infrastructure because of the absence of a working

town planning consent and enforcement system – the absence of ‘institutional maturity’ (see

’Publications’, item 6).

Thus, while the technical problem solving side has been dominant in Tanzania (the institutional

development model), the spatial aspects of ‘a social way of life’, in terms of the ‘mediation of

space’, are starting to take hold.x These are still early days but there is a commitment to mediating

space, by capturing environmental management (designing with nature), demarcating strategic

land-uses at district and regional levels (in terms of their function in practice, not just in terms of

legal definitions), giving spatial expression to various aspects of poverty (including quantifying

access to basic infrastructure and services) and taking steps towards gender-equitable local

development (GELD - see ‘Publications’, item 4).

Tanzania has fertile land, water, (recently discovered) mineral resources, rapidly growing towns

and cities, and a young and burgeoning population. Mediating space is therefore the next step.

‘The making of place’ is a little further down the road of development sophistication. For now, the

sum total of our efforts might be measured with Tanzania ceasing to be classed as an LDC.xi Kenya

is a ‘middle income’ country, so is Ghana. We need, at least, to achieve the same for Tanzania!xii

References and notes All photos taken by the author. iDirect quotation from Dr. Mike Cuthbert, (then) lecturer in planning theory at Heriot-Watt University: advocate of the new epistemology of town planning, propounded by Patrick Geddes (see ‘Other References’, item 3). Geddes did a lot of work in the developing world. iihttp://www.nationsonline.org/oneworld/least_developed_countries.htm

iii I was O&E adviser to CSRP from 1995-98. ivThe O&E experience is captured in Civil service reform in Tanzania: organisation and efficiency through process consulting. International Journal of Public Sector Management (1999), Vol. 12, No. 5, pp. 410-419; with some of the PB work in Performance budgeting. International Journal of Public Sector Management (2001), Vol. 14, No. 5, pp. 376-390. v The ORGUT team of six HQ and 12 inter-regional advisers started in January 2011.In April 2012, the functional specifics of six finance and six HR inter-regional advisers, to cover 25 regions was changed, with an increase to 25 regional TAs. Their central focus is on the programme management cycle (planning, budgeting, implementation and review): specifically, to support the regions to increase the capacity of the 132 LGAs to deliver community-supported (and desperately needed) infrastructure and services, more economically, efficiently and effectively. viNote to Figure 1: recent initiatives have seen a clarification in the morphology of progress. First, we are dealing with ‘internal’ organizational capacity to perform - to deliver (the new LGA management checklist, covering basic operational concerns such as budgeting, accounting and procurement). Secondly, actual performance concerns the ‘external’ organizationally specific delivery of infrastructure and supporting services, economically, efficiently and effectively (the LGA planning and budgeting handbook). Finally is the geographically defined, environmentally sensitive, holistic and therefore, institutionally integrated, development plan. This is where development is allocated equitably; thus treating poorer locations more sympathetically, to bring them to a point of reasonable equality (basic needs; the Millennium Development Goals). This encourages all districts and regions to have a chance to achieve socially useful, economically viable and environmentally regenerative, further progress (the new LGA integrated development plan checklist). In short: we want councils to have the ‘internal’ capacity to perform; to perform well ‘externally’ from that increased capacity (to have an impact ‘out there’); and as the lowest level of competent government, to integrate all players in the geographically defined local development process (ultimately, ‘the mediation of space’). vii See my review of The Triumph of the City, particularly concerning Haussmann’s destruction of swathes of medieval Paris; an approach to town planning lamented by Geddes in Cities in Evolution. Available on RTPI website here: www.rtpi.org.uk/media/12547/mcgill_review_of__triumph_of_the_city__by_edward_glaeser.pdf

viii This is now captured in two draft texts: Local Government Authorities Planning and Budgeting Handbook (LGA PBH, 26 A4 pages) and the LGA Management Checklist (LGA MC, 24 A4 pages). PBH is distilled from over 400 pages of government published texts on planning, budgeting, community participation and locally accessed development funding. MC is inspired from the controller and auditor general’s (CAG’s) 170 page report on LGA performance in 2010-11. PBH is concerned with ‘making a difference out there’ – so, with the external concerns of actually delivering the infrastructure and services, economically, efficiently and effectively, to the people who need them. MC is concerned with the internal challenges of simply being in a fit condition organizationally and

financially to do so! Both are to be issued by the parent ministry; Prime Minister’s Office - Regional Administration and Local Government (PMO-RALG) in 2012. ix ODA’s (now DFID’s) town clerks’ project in Malawi (1989-91) was in response to a damning government audit report on Lilongwe (the Garden City capital), Blantyre (the commercial hub) and Mzuzu (the northern region’s capital). The project was designed to modernize the administration and to ‘balance the books’. I soon argued that to take such a narrow view of the council, while ignoring the urban development challenges of the rapidly growing cities, was dangerously myopic: what was the point of having the council in financial surplus when its infrastructure and services were both statically inadequate and dynamically, unable to keep pace with the rapidly growing city (a 7% annual population growth). I argued that an urban management perspective of city development and council response should hold sway. I was invited to return to Malawi as urban management adviser (1991-93); then was offered one year ODA funding to complete my PhD at Strathclyde University. Graduation was followed by Macmillan and St.Martin’s publication of Institutional Development…

x The technical advice on this is the Integrated Development Plan Checklist, to be issued by PMO-RALG in 2012. The note is adapted from ‘publication’ item 5. xiThe Citizen on Sunday of 1 July 2012 cited the following statistics, among others, arising from the Tanzania Demographic and Health Surveys (2010): in the rural population, 97% had no electricity; 93% had no bank account; 96% had no motor vehicle; 94% lived in houses with no solid (concrete or brick) walls. Yet over 40% already had a mobile ‘phone – a possible indicator to an alternative development paradigm? See for example Unleashing Entrepreneurship: making business work for the poor. UNDP (2004), New York, 54pp. http://web.undp.org/cpsd/documents/report/english/fullreport.pdf xiiWhen I joined UNCDF in May 2001, Vietnam was an LDC. When I left in May 2009, it was no longer so; having elevated itself to a ‘middle income’ county. The explanations varied but seemed to come down to two factors; growing institutional maturity and sound political leadership. All else being equal: with both characteristics in place, plus a benign climate, fertile land and young population, economic development followed. Author’s selected publications: 1. City Management in Developing Countries: an Institutional Development Perspective.

BookSurge (2007), 310 pp. First published as Institutional development: a Third World city management perspective. St Martin's Press, New York, NY (Jan, 1997) and Macmillan Press, Basingstoke (Nov, 1996), 310 pp; http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=ntt_at_ep_srch?_encoding=UTF8&sort=relevancerank&search-alias=books&field-author=Ronald%20McGill

2. Achieving results: performance budgeting in the least developed countries. United Nations Capital Development Fund, New York (2006), 234 pp. http://www.uncdf.org/english/local_development/documents_and_reports/thematic_papers/pbb/index.php

3. Building capacity for local government to perform. Commonwealth Journal of Local Governance, (2010) Issue 6, pp 90-106. http://epress.lib.uts.edu.au/ojs/index.php/cjlg/article/view/1624/1763

4. A human rights approach to localising the MDGs through gender-equitable local development. Commonwealth Journal of Local Governance, (2009) Issue 4, pp 77-100. http://epress.lib.uts.edu.au/ojs/index.php/cjlg/article/view/1357/1409

5. Urban management checklist. Cities: International Journal of Urban Policy and Planning (2001),

Vol. 18, No. 5, pp. 347-354. 6. What planning is – or should be: a Third World perspective. Royal Town Planning Institute Journal

(1999), Vol. 85, 17th September. 7. Urban management in developing countries. Cities: International Journal of Urban Policy and

Planning (1998), Vol. 15, No. 6, pp. 463-471. 8. Urban management performance: an assessment framework for Third World city managers.

Cities: International Journal of Urban Policy and Planning (1995), Vol. 12, No. 5, pp. 337-351. These and other titles are also recorded at http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=ronald.mcgill&hl=en&btnG=Search Other retrievable references: 1. The Sunderland Study: Tackling urban problems: a working guide Making towns better. Volume

2 of The Sunderland Study, Sunderland (Tyne and Wear, England). Council. McKinsey and Company, Sunderland (Tyne and Wear, England). Council. H.M. Stationery Office 1973.

2. Local Government and Strategic Choice: An Operational Research Approach to the Processes of Public Planning (Urban and regional planning series). http://www.amazon.co.uk/Local-Government-Strategic-Choice-Operational/dp/0422752908/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1336900998&sr=1-1

3. Cities in Evolution http://www.amazon.com/Cities-evolution-introduction-planning-movement/dp/B0041D920G/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1336901591&sr=1-2

4. Design with Nature http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_i_0_18?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=design+with+nature&sprefix=Design+with+Nature%2Caps%2C425