Introduction

The Tanzania Coalition on Debt and Development (TCDD) is a national Coalition of Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) which have joined together to form a forum to co-ordinate civil society participation in lobbying for deeper and faster debt relief and/or total debt cancellation.  Since the Highly Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) initiative was launched in late year 2000, TCDD has actively involved itself in the process of preparing the PRSP, which is a HIPC conditionality that acts as an accountability framework that will ensure Government resources that are freed as a result of debt relief are squarely focused and directed to poverty reduction.

TCDD engaged the Government at various points during the drafting of the PRSP, with the aim of ensuring that Civil Society views and perspectives are incorporated into the PRSP.  It is our view that previous macro-economic frameworks have failed because their design did not reflect the day-to-day experiences of people living in poverty.  The process documented in this report takes civil society engagement around the PRSP further by developing strategies to monitor the implementation and impact of the PRSP process.  District based civil society organisations from 38 districts that are in the first phase of the Local Government Reform programme and other national umbrella advocacy NGOs participated in a workshop to discuss “strategies for civil society engagement in monitoring poverty and PRSP”.

The workshop took place at Kurasini Tanzania Episcopal Conference Centre (TEC) hostel in Dar es Salaam from 4-6 April 2001.  Various topics ranging from participatory poverty assessments to introducing recent Government efforts to establish a Poverty Monitoring system were made.  Presentations and facilitations were made by people from civil society organisations, academic institutions and the Government.  Plenary discussions were conducted after every presentation.  Small group exercises focusing on the main thrust of each day’s deliberations were done at the end of each day.