Integrated rural development in Tanzania
| Published date | 01 January 1988 |
| Author | L. Kleemeier |
| Date | 01 January 1988 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1002/pad.4230080106 |
PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION AND DEVELOPMENT,
Vol.
8, 61-73 (1988)
Integrated rural development in Tanzania
L.
KLEEMEIER
University
of
Dar
es
Salaam
SUMMARY
Tanzania did not have the kind of agricultural policies, popular participation,
or
government
bureaucratic capacity necessary for integrated rural development projects to perform well.
Nonetheless the World Bank,
EEC,
and United States each implemented such projects
there during the
1970s.
The implementation and achievements of the projects varied
considerably due to differences in their design as well as decisions made by the implemen-
tation teams. However the experiences
of
all three projects demonstrate two things: no
agricultural development project can adapt to producer price disincentives; and both
participation and project management require a ‘critical minimum’ level of finance and
resources which the Tanzanian bureaucracy does not have. The latter observation raises
the question
of
whether donors should attempt to build management capacity in fourth
world bureaucracies
or,
as Goran Hyden suggests, avoid the government and work through
other institutions and local organizations.
INTRODUCTION
This article examines how political conditions in Tanzania affected three types of
integrated rural development projects. By examining the experiences of these
three projects,
I
would like to establish whether any approach to integrated rural
development proved more adapatable or resilient to political factors than other
approaches.
The interest in integrated rural development projects developed out
of
donor
efforts to find an effective means for delivering assistance
to
smallholders, and
from early experiences with area-based projects such as the Comilla project in
Bangladesh and the
PIDER
project in Mexico. However, neither
donors
nor
development scholars reached any consensus on the definition
of
an integrated
rural development project (Cohen,
1980).
One
widespread use
of
the term
is
for
a
project in which a donor uses a single team of experts to manage activities in
several sectors, in order to help the majority of smallholders living in a designated
Dr Kleemeier is
in
the Department
of
Political Science and Public Administration at the University
of
Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.
0271-2075/88/010061-13$06.50
@
1988
by John Wiley
&
Sons, Ltd.
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